We regretfully have suspended all our activities in association with this development. When the Village took precipitous action against us by passing an ordinance allowing the Village President to purchase the property by eminent domain then refused to meet with us to discuss this potential action, our otherwise well-advanced funding was forced out by the uncertainty of ownership. We were otherwise ready, willing, able and capable to develop the subject property.
We thank the residents for their support during our process.
Over the past month, the Lincolnwood Board of Trustees has debated and passed an Ordinance authorizing the Village Board President to make a bona fide offer to purchase the property at Touhy and Lincoln Avenues. This Ordinance is commonly understood to be the first step of a potential eminent domain proceeding. The Board’s motivations for this action have been described as a desire to better control the development process and skepticism regarding the ability of our fee developer – Z|S Development.
Since the initial announcement of the proposed ordinance in mid-February, the development process has been put on hold to re-underwrite the risk to our investors. We cannot responsibly invest additional capital toward expensive planning and analysis efforts until the intentions of the Village of Lincolnwood are understood. We feel our development team should be allowed to proceed through the same, standard, codified process as any other developer, without the threat that the Village Board President might, at any time, begin a process that leads towards condemnation, rendering our investment into further planning lost. At Lincolnwood’s March 20th Committee of the Whole meeting, we asked that the Village to remove this Ordinance and allow the process to begin as originally agreed with Village staff and outlined in the Village code, or to make their bona fide offer. If neither of those is amenable to the Village, a third option would be for the Village to provide a list of acceptable developers so we may hire a fee developer that is acceptable to the Village.
On March 6, 2018 the Village Board of Lincolnwood passed an Ordinance Authorizing Negotiations and Final Bona Fide Offers to Purchase Title to Certain Real Property Located at 4500 – 4560 W. Touhy Avenue and 7350 N. Lincoln. This the first step in potential lengthy and expensive condemnation process.
