Wheaton office park could turn into multifamily housing development

The Wheaton Oaks office park looks out on Elliot Lake, named after the founder of Elliot Construction.

“It’s a beautiful, quiet area,” said Rick Lewellyan, a Wheaton resident and owner of Innovate Real Estate.

The campus parking lot also was mostly empty on a recent work day. With an older office complex on their hands, the property owners are asking the city to rezone it to help pave the way for a future multifamily development.

It could become another example of an obsolete suburban office park being replaced with housing. In Naperville, the Illinois Health and Hospital Association has decided to sell a property with a three-story office building surrounded by trees. Builder M/I Homes wants to create an enclave of townhouses on the site near forest preserve land.

To the south of the Wheaton Oaks campus is another natural area — Lincoln Marsh — and to the west is the Wheaton Sport Center.

“There’s such a glut of office out there,” said Lewellyan, who recently presented the proposal to the city’s planning and zoning board. “And this is kind of a hidden location, and it just doesn’t work as office … we have a few tenants in there, but it just doesn’t work.”

In Wheaton, office spaces are “suffering extensive vacancies” as more people work from home, according to documents submitted to the city as part of the rezoning request. Wheaton Oaks is “not even” 20% occupied, Lewellyan said.

“If this 30,000 square feet of office is taken off the market, well that’s just going to help the ones on the arterial roads, be it on Main Street, be it on Roosevelt, be it on Geneva, wherever else they are,” he told the Daily Herald.

Planning and zoning board members have endorsed the proposed rezoning. The city council is expected to consider it later this month.

“There’s a lot of demand for good housing in the city of Wheaton, so it just makes sense,” Lewellyan said.

The proposal calls for rezoning the property to the R-5 Residential District. The area to the north, home to a townhouse subdivision, also has that classification.

As for a future development, the intent is to work with the city and figure out “what they think is best,” Lewellyan said.

“We’re looking to do residential and bring a lot more profit to the city of Wheaton and figure out the best use,” Lewellyan said.

Wheaton’s zoning ordinance would require approval of a planned unit development for a multifamily project with over two units in the R-5 district. The nearly 3-acre site also contains a flood plain.

“We don’t want to hurt the marsh or anything … we will have to come back through and with good plans,” Lewellyan told board members.

As part of the Gary Avenue roadwork project, a traffic signal is being installed at the intersection with Prairie Avenue — the road leading to the Wheaton Sport Center and the existing office complex.

“This building was built, as they say, way back when. The first floor on one side is ADA compliant,” Lewellyan said. But the second floor is not. “So it’s economic obsolescence.”