The recent bankruptcy filing by a Tinley Park company involved in the planned redevelopment of the shuttered Lincoln Mall in Matteson won’t affect the firm’s work on those plans, according to a Matteson official.
Mack Industries filed for Chapter 11 on March 24, and a subsidiary of the firm, Mack Developers, was given an exclusive six-month contract by Matteson last fall to formulate a plan for the mall site, southeast of the intersection of U.S. 30 and Cicero Avenue. Mack has until April 10 to finalize the proposal, according to the village.
Brian Mitchell, Matteson village administrator, said he spoke with the company after the bankruptcy filing, and was told the court case wouldn’t affect Mack making that deadline.
The company got its start buying, rehabbing then renting foreclosed single-family homes in the south suburbs, then expanded into residential construction as well as commercial development. Formerly Mack Cos., the firm outgrew its offices on Oak Park Avenue in Tinley Park, later moving to a larger facility at Oak Park Avenue and Centennial Drive.
Matteson, in early February, won court approval of its plan to demolish the mall, the cost of which is expected to be around $3.5 million, according to Mitchell. He said the Village Board had approved authorizing up to $3.5 million in tax increment financing money to purchase receiver’s certificates to finance the demolition. A hearing to present final demolition estimates to the judge overseeing the case is expected to be scheduled early next in April.
Mitchell said that should the judge sign off on the plan, the village hopes to begin demolition by the middle of this month, completing the work sometime in July.
Opened in 1973, the mall closed in January 2015. Its remaining anchor, Carson Pirie Scott, owns its store and remains open for business.
Whatever Mack presents to Matteson officials will face scrutiny, with the Village Board leaning toward a proposal that mixes both residential and retail uses.
In an April 2015 news release, James “Mack” McClelland, Mack Industries’ CEO, cited Lincoln Mall as an example of how a mixed-use development could be tailored to fit a community’s demographics in redeveloping a moribund mall.
Rather than simply “trying to replace a failed model with more of the same,” meaning relying on a retail-heavy reuse of the site, a “community within a community” could be built, McClelland wrote, noting how other towns have incorporated things such as senior care facilities and youth activity centers in redeveloping failed enclosed malls.
Matteson officials had previously rejected one ambitious proposal to put a hotel, indoor-outdoor water park and ice rink in the mall, as well as a separate plan to build apartments, housing for senior citizens and some retail space on the property.
Branching out from its roots as a residential landlord, Mack Industries more recently completed a 200-bed skilled nursing center for McAllister Nursing & Rehab in Country Club Hills, and was involved in a town home and apartment development at the Fay’s Point Marina in Blue Island and had planned a townhouse development in Oak Forest on the site of a former Ace Hardware store on Cicero Avenue.
Because the company is continuing to operate as it reorganizes under Chapter 11, there should be minimal impact on Mack’s existing tenants, Eric Zelazny, a Chicago Heights attorney representing the company in federal bankruptcy court, told the Chicago Tribune.
In the bankruptcy filing, Mack Industries lists its biggest unsecured creditor, with a claim of $4 million, as Arizona-based American Residential Leasing. The filing notes that both companies are involved in a lawsuit in state court for alleged breach of contract, but that the amount of money involved is “undetermined and disputed” by Mack.
In late 2012, Mack and American Residential announced an agreement under which Mack would sell nearly 200 homes in its portfolio in suburbs such as Country Club Hills, Flossmoor, Homewood and Matteson to American Residential, with the agreement calling for Mack to supply American with 30 to 50 additional homes each month over the next two or three years.
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