A developer will need to find another way to update an aging Naperville shopping center on the city’s south side if it wants to incorporate a self-storage facility into its plans.
Shorewood Development Group recently approached the city with plans to infuse $45 million to $50 million into the modernization of the Market Meadows Shopping Center at the northwest corner of 75th Street and Naper Boulevard.
The concept proposed called for incorporating a self-storage facility accessible from the rear of the center and increasing the amount retail space in the front. But the city’s business zoning does not allow for storage in a district zoned for neighborhood convenience shopping.
While Naperville City Council rejected the developer’s proposal to amend city code to permit self-storage facilities, council members suggested the developer look for other means to accomplish the goal.
Shorewood CEO Louis Schriber said it’s been 40 years since any money was put into the shopping center and it shows.
The parking lot is distressed, the traffic flow is poor, and the heating and air conditioning systems aren’t functioning right, Schriber said. “Everything’s kind of at the useful or at the end of its useful life,” he said.
As a result, vacancies are high in what should be a premier shopping area that has a Jewel-Osco store as an anchor, he said.
In the section where shops are organized in a courtyard, Schriber said 90% of the space is vacant and will be fully vacant at the end of the month.
To help spur interest among major retailers, Schriber said his company would like to redo the courtyard with 17,000 square feet of retail shops fronting the shopping center and tuck a self-storage facility behind.
A 35-foot-wide retail/office space would be available along the retail strip where people could rent storage spaces and purchase boxes, he said. Access to the self-storage would be behind the shopping center, and all loading and unloading would be conducted inside the facility, Schriber said.
Council members’ concerns that the storage facility would take away retail space are unwarranted, he said.
The center currently provides 155,000 square feet of retail space, he said. “What we’re doing here is we’re creating 195,000 square feet of retail so that this storage isn’t taking away from other uses,” Schriber said.
As the landlord of the shopping center, his company is trying to find the highest and best uses for the site that also make it the most profitable, he said.
“I’ll tell you the storage is not our most profitable. But it is the thing that’s on the table that can activate the center and get these national tenants,” he said.
City Manager Doug Krieger said the biggest concern for the Naperville Development Partnership was that amending city code would lead to the proliferation of similar self-storage facilities throughout the city.
That same red flag was raised by council member Judy Brodhead and city staff.
Mayor Steve Chirico said that while the city has worked hard to fill big box spaces with retailers and not storage facilities, what the developer is proposing “really makes a lot of sense.”
“I think it will be great to see money invested in this shopping district because it truly is a tired, old center right now that I have to go to quite often,” Chirico said.
But adding a storage facility to a retail area, council member Kevin Coyne said, “can be perceived as somewhat of a death knell because it’s never going to help originate customers and traffic for the other businesses. It’s kind of limiting in that respect.”
That said, Coyne indicated he doesn’t feel that way about this project because it looks nicer than the typical storage center.
In addition, he said the city needs to be more open-minded dealing with retail properties and big box development.
Even Aurora, he said, is considering condominiums at the mall, something that was unimaginable not that long ago.
Council member Paul Hinterlong agreed the city needs to find creative ways to address shopping centers. “I like it. I think we need to have that flexibility, otherwise we’re going to be sitting on a lot of dead space in a lot of retail centers,” he said.
What he could not agree with, Hinterlong said, was amending city code. Nor could six other council members.
A vote to initiate changing city code to accommodate the development failed 7-2; Chirico and Coyne voted in favor.
Allison Laff, deputy director of the city’s Transportation, Engineering and Development department, said staff will work with the city attorney and developer to find another way to more narrowly allow self-storage at this shopping center and not in other locations.
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