Plans call for restaurants, driving range, apartments at former Lombard seminary campus

A developer is seeking permission from Lombard to redevelop the former Northern Baptist Theological Seminary campus along Butterfield Road.

Schaumburg-based Hoffmann Alpha Omega Development Group, doing business as Hoffmann 600 Lombard LLC, is under contract to acquire the roughly 27-acre site, which has been vacant since the seminary relocated to Lisle in 2017.

Hoffmann 600 Lombard is proposing a $159 million mixed-used project that would include restaurants, an apartment complex and a gas station.

The centerpiece of the redevelopment would be a combined Moretti's restaurant and golf driving range complex called GolfSocial. It's slated to be built east of the Westin hotel in Lombard and connect to it via a covered walkway.

Other restaurants or retail, the new apartment complex and the proposed gas station would also be built on the site. The project would be constructed in phases.

Hoffmann 600 plans to demolish the vacant seminary buildings, fill in most of the existing drainage pond facing Butterfield Road and build a new connection road up to 22nd Street. Separate from Hoffmann 600, the village of Lombard is considering a portion of the site for a new water tower.

The proposed redevelopment site is in the tax increment financing district known as the Butterfield Yorktown TIF. In a TIF district, property taxes paid to local governments are frozen for up to 23 years. Any extra property tax money collected within the area after the district is established go into a special fund to help pay for certain improvements.

When it was created in 2017, the Butterfield Yorktown TIF included the JCPenney store within Yorktown Center mall, part of the mall's ring road, a mostly vacant strip mall along the ring road called Yorktown Convenience Center, the Westin hotel and an office building on 22nd Street.

To help pay for the project, Hoffmann 600 initially requested up to $31.5 million over a 10-year period from the TIF district. But during an economic and community development committee meeting earlier this week, the panel directed the village to negotiate a deal that, if approved, would give the developer up to $27.5 million over a 16-year period from the TIF district.

Meanwhile, the Lombard plan commission last month offered up recommendations for the rezoning and redevelopment. Lombard village trustees are expected to review the project on Jan. 5.