Mundelein officials have agreed to spend up to $900,000 on road improvements to pave the way for a Dominick’s Finer Foods store at Illinois Highways 176 and 83.
Village officials agreed to put up the money after representatives of Mid-Northern Equities Ltd., which plans to build on the 14-acre plot with the supermarket as its anchor store, said the site could not be developed unless the intersection was upgraded.
Mid-Northern President William Shiner said the new shopping center would add 5,000 trips a day through the intersection, which is already handling 40,000 cars daily. Village officials say the two lanes simply couldn’t handle the traffic. They plan to add left-turn lanes and more sophisticated traffic lights, and widen the lanes near the intersection.
The road improvements are needed because “neither the county nor state has those roads on their 10-year plan for improvement, and hundreds of homes are being built right down the street that are going to further increase the traffic,” said Village Trustee Duane Dudek.
Initially at Monday night’s Village Board meeting, Shiner offered to put $1.35 million into upgrading the intersection if the village would come up with a sales-tax rebate to recover $1 million of the costs spread over six years.
The village, however, proposed instead paying for up to $900,000 of the cost of intersection improvements using funds that the village has collected from transportation development fees. Village Administrator Ken Marabella said that could save the village up to $50,000 in fees for setting up a special tax district that would be required for the rebate.
Marabella said improving the substandard intersection using the funds, largely from the Town and Country development impact fees, would bring added sales- and property-tax revenue to the village and local schools.
Shiner estimated that the village would receive at least $7.7 million in property-tax revenue from the new center over a 20-year period. The village also stands to gain $428,000 in development fees for the new center, including annexation, capital development, transportation, tree replacement and water and sewer connection fees.
This is the second time the village has used development impact fees to improve an intersection, Marabella said. Funds collected from Cambridge Homes in the late 1980s were used to improve the intersection of Illinois Highways 60 and 83 and Midlothian Road.
Robert Mariano, president of Dominick’s, said he was pleased that negotiations to improve the intersection were successful.
“This is a great spot to be in and a good opportunity for us,” he said.
Marabella called the new grocery “long-awaited.”
“A Dominick’s store has been talked about since 1987,” he said. “Now the time is right.”
Mariano said the 65,000-square-foot store will include a restaurant, deli and bakery. He said the new store will be larger than the one in Vernon Hills on Town Line Road.
Shiner said he would apply to the village for an excavation permit in September, and the new Dominick’s should be open by September 1996. Plans for the site include another 40,000 square feet of additional tenants, which Shiner did not name.
Mid-Northern Equities has also developed Stratford Plaza in Bloomingdale, Oak Brook Court in Oak Brook and Schaumburg Court in Schaumburg.
