Rosemont to build new hotel, offices
Rosemont is gearing up for another redevelopment project this summer that will add to the village's existing 5,562 hotel rooms.
Construction of a 155-room Hampton Suites hotel, a more than 150,000-square-foot, five-story office building to house the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, and a 600-space parking garage is expected to begin around July 1 at the northwest corner of River and Higgins roads, a block south of Rivers Casino in Des Plaines.
“It's the only undeveloped piece of property over there,” Rosemont Mayor Bradley Stephens said Friday. “This has been a long time coming.”
The Rosemont village board has set up a new tax increment financing, or TIF, district for the area along River and Higgins roads. A redevelopment agreement conveys the roughly five acres from village ownership to the hotel and office building developers, and it includes a $12 million tax incentive funded through TIF revenues to spur construction.
A TIF freezes property tax payments from the land within its boundaries for up to 23 years. Extra revenue generated as properties are developed and increase in value can be used to pay for infrastructure improvements and incentives to developers.
“The real estate tax revenue, when this project is fully built out, gets us back more than our TIF money (invested),” Stephens said. “Over the course of the TIF, that will be more than flush.”
TIF 6 stretches along River and Higgins roads down to the U.S. Bank office building at 9575 Higgins Road. It encompasses the shopping center housing Village Pizzeria, Pancakes Eggcetera, Rosewood Restaurant & Banquets, Giordano's, a Mobil gas station, and a two-story apartment building with 12 units that will be torn down in November, Stephens said.
Rosemont bought the vacant site northwest of Higgins and River — formerly a golf driving range — for roughly $8.5 million for the redevelopment project. The village will make site improvements that will bring the total amount invested up to $12 million, Stephens said.
The office building will be first to break ground, followed by construction of the parking deck, and then the hotel.
“It's a staged construction because it's such a tight site,” Stephens said. “They can't build all three at once.”
The office building is expected to be ready for occupancy by the end of 2014, and the hotel by the first quarter of 2015, Stephens said.
Rosemont has been abuzz with development for the past two years.
In 2012, the village debuted its MB Financial Park at Rosemont entertainment and restaurant district on village-owned property just west of River Road and north of Balmoral Avenue fronting the northbound Tri-State Tollway.
The village invested more than $40 million into the 200,000-square-foot development, which features entertainment, dining and festival space.
Rosemont is getting $3 million of its investment back just by letting MB Financial sponsor the district. Annual rent for the eight venues housed there also should net more than $3 million.
The village estimates The Park at Rosemont will generate between $1 million and $1.2 million in property tax revenue, $450,000 in sales taxes, and $200,000 in food and beverage taxes in its first year. Rosemont also should get about $225,000 in amusement tax revenue yearly, officials have said.
The development is flanked by Muvico Theater to the north, and Rosemont Theatre and a future upscale, two-story outlet mall on the south.
The roughly $230 million, 530,000-square-foot Fashion Outlets of Chicago mall south of Balmoral Avenue is set to open Aug. 1. It includes a 2,840-space parking garage owned by the village that will be deeded over to the mall developer at the end of the life of the area's tax increment financing district in 2034.
Other projects nearing completion include relocation of the Big Ten Conference's headquarters to a three-story office building under construction next to the Aloft hotel, just south of the entertainment district, expected to happen in September.
The 50,000-square-foot building will house the Big Ten Conference center, an interactive museum, and a Fogo de Chao Brazilian steakhouse, also opening this fall.
Stephens said there's also mounting interest from developers in the roughly 25 acres the village owns west of the Tri-State Tollway, north and south of Balmoral Avenue — property Stephens offered to the Chicago Cubs for a possible future ballpark — for shopping and athletic uses. The village also owns about 20 acres along Mannheim/Higgins roads with frontage along I-190 that's ripe for development, he said.