Nearly a year after developers announced, with great fanfare, that an antiques center would replace an abandoned hardware store in Barrington, the building remains mostly vacant–its empty parking lot a symbol of disappointment in a community eager for a bustling downtown.
The antiques dealers and tourists on which village officials had pinned hopes of revitalizing downtown Barrington never materialized. And despite the robust economy, finding other tenants for the retail hub, called Market Center, has proven difficult.
“It’s just been slow–slow in construction, slow in leasing,” observed Barrington Plan Commissioner Greg Furda.
Earlier this year, a children’s store, Little Munchkins, and a specialty food shop, Gourmet Faire, opened in Market Center, at 200 N. Hough St., just north of the Union Pacific commuter rail line. If a pancake house goes ahead with plans to open a restaurant there, about 50 percent of the space will be rented, said leasing agent Cassandra Savard.
Yet even when fully leased, the development apparently won’t have quite the cachet that village officials had hoped.
A year ago, Barrington officials were exultant about the possibilities of Market Center breathing life into the downtown business district.
“If this comes off, we will have a renaissance in this town,” Furda predicted.
Lake Forest resident Renard Goltra, owner of the 4-acre site, had proposed transforming an old hardware and garden store into an antiques mecca. Barrington business owners Al and Rose Pickett were to have operated the store.
Antiques vendors from around the Chicago area were to have been invited to set up shop in the 10,000 square-foot store, which was to have taken up about one-third of the total space. Specialty retail shops were to have occupied the rest of the space.
Village officials predicted Market Center would create a tourist mini-industry, similar to Long Grove. They also said it would encourage more pedestrian traffic, benefiting other downtown businesses.
But the last year has brought construction delays, village oversight obstructions and cost overruns that raised the rent and drove out the Picketts, leaving the project without an anchor store.
“I think it’s a pretty disappointing situation,” said Al Pickett, who with his wife, Rose, owns Silk ‘n Things in Barrington.
Construction delays played havoc with Market Center plans, said Savard, of Savard Associates in Barrington.
“Once we got a special-use permit from the village last May, all the contractors had jobs for the summer, so we had to bring in construction crews from Wisconsin,” she said.
Changes in the floor plan caused more delays, as well as village requirements for safety features such as fire sprinklers, she said.
In December, the Picketts learned they would have to pay more rent than expected, they said, and pulled out of the project.
“There are a lot of things we were told would be done that haven’t been done,” Al Pickett said.
But Savard said the development is turning the corner.
“It needs a lot of loving care and cutting the right deals with the right tenants,” said Savard, who also is the leasing agent for the Foundry of Barrington on Northwest Highway in Barrington. That shopping center has a waiting list of prospective tenants, she said.
“That’s what happened to the Foundry, and that is what will happen here,” she said.
