City officials are negotiating with developers to turn the long vacant building at 1055 W. Bryn Mawr Ave. into a contemporary retail building.
The building stands at the heart of a four-block strip of Bryn Mawr that local residents and community leaders describe as Edgewater’s main street of architecturally significant buildings.
Negotiations are underway with ATA LLC, which consists of Skokie-based Taxman Corp. and Chicago-based architects Antunovich Associates.
ATA will pay $200,000 for a 30,000-square-foot site that consists of a 15,825-square-foot art deco building, built in 1935, on the southeast corner of Bryn Mawr and Winthrop Avenues and an adjacent parking lot that will be resconstructed to provide 32 parking spaces, according to Pete Scales of the Department of Planning and Development. The Community Development Commission last week approved ATA as the developer.
The city paid $1.2 million for the site in March 2000; Planning Department officials issued a request for development proposals last July.
Another proposal came from a public/private partnership between Holsten Real Estate Development Corp. and Edgewater Development Corp. It was widely championed by Edgewater residents who recall Holsten’s rehab of two other long-dilapidated buildings in the area — the Bryn Mawr and Belshore apartment buildings. They showed up at the commission meeting to voice their objections.
City officials defended their selection of ATA, primarily because the ATA team’s $2 million project sought no city TIF (tax increment financing) subsidy, while Holsten EDC’s $4.4 million project sought $2.5 million in TIF loans and subsidies.
“ATA was able to finance [the project] internally and did not have to cover costs of borrowing and legal fees [associated with securing TIF financing],” Greg Harris, chief of staff for Ald. Mary Ann Smith (48th), said in an interview last week.
The city paid $1.2 million for the site. A minimum $200,000 land price sought in the city’s request for development proposals affords ATA a $1 million subsidy.
Harris added that ATA is talking to Transitions Bookplace, a new age bookstore, about occupying the building. “It was the dream of the Edgewater Development Corp. for years to have Transitions come into the neighborhood,” Harris said. “If Transitions works out it will be the only tenant in the building.”
