The Chicago area’s largest home builder is aiming to jump-start the stalled development of the village’s last good-sized tract of vacant land.
Oak Brook-based Town & Country Homes recently purchased much of the 50-acre Baker Hill site at the northeast corner of Roosevelt Road and Illinois Highway 53 and expects to bring a plan for retail and commercial use before Glen Ellyn in the next several weeks, said Kurt Wandrey, the company’s executive vice president for land development. Although Glen Ellyn spelled out a clear set of mixed-use development objectives for the site in 1993, the heavily wooded land has remained dormant over the last three years as several different developers have mulled, but ultimately scrapped, development plans.
Now, Wandrey said, Town & Country hopes to develop about 35 acres of the Baker Hill property with 250 to 280 town homes on the site’s northern and eastern portion. The company is working with Great Lakes Partners of Oakbrook Terrace to build a commercial center, with “highway-oriented” tenants that would not compete with Glen Ellyn’s downtown merchants, on 15 acres that are adjacent to Roosevelt and Illinois Highway 53.
Although Glen Ellyn planners had envisioned about 10 acres of office space along Roosevelt, Town & Country will convert that land to residential use because of a soft office market.
Previous developers have been most attracted to the land for its retail potential. Two companies had toyed with asking the village for tax-increment financing, which funds infrastructure improvements with tax money that otherwise would be collected from increases in the property’s value. Town & Country, however, doesn’t view TIF financing as a necessity.
“It’s not a deal-breaker,” Wandrey said. “We know that politically the village has no interest in it.”
The site includes an abandoned church building, formerly used by the Glen Ellyn Missionary Church, that would be demolished, along with several homes on the property, Wandrey said.
