Homewood buying office space next to Metra station
Village eyeing site for mixed-use development
More residential development could come to downtown Homewood as the village purchases a large tract of office space just east of the village’s Metra station.
While formal redevelopment plans are not yet in place, village officials see it as being ideal for a mixeduse development that would include apartment units, similar to a project underway nearby and potentially being another piece in Homewood’s long-range plan to create more transit-oriented development clustered near the Metra station.
The Homewood Village Board voted Tuesday to pay $500,000 for the office building, at the northeast corner of Ridge Road and Harwood Avenue, as well as another site nearby owned by the same person which the village plans to use for a new municipal water tank.
At just under a half-acre, the Ridge/Harwood site includes a two-story office building of about 12,000 square feet, according to the village.
Homewood has a developer interested in the site, and while a mix of commercial and residential uses is favored by the village there are no set plans in place, Homewood Mayor Rich Hofeld said.
“In all probability, work could start within a year” to demolish and redevelop the site, Hofeld said Thursday.
The purchase comes as construction continues on a multiuse development, The Hartford, about a half block to the east on the site of the former Triumph building, 2023 Ridge Road.
The Hartford is a fourstory building that will contain 36 apartments and, on the main floor, Stoney Point Grill. The Hartford is immediately south of the 18-unit boutique La Banque Hotel.
Work also continues on an overhaul of Homewood’s stop on the Metra Electric
Line and the adjacent Amtrak station.
Metra’s $14 million project will include replacing the pedestrian tunnel, built in 1911, that runs under the tracks between Harwood and the station.
The Amtrak station, 18015 Park Ave., is on Illinois’ Register of Historic Places and Amtrak is keeping architectural elements of the building in place during the renovation. The station is one of the stops on Amtrak’s Illini and Saluki lines to Downstate cities including Champaign-Urbana, Effingham and Carbondale, as well as the famous City of New Orleans route.
In recent years, communities in the south and southwest suburbs have supported transit-oriented developments, with officials greenlighting projects that place residential and commercial development near Metra commuter stops.
Examples include the Ninety7Fifty on the Park apartments in Orland Park, next to the 143rd Street Metra station, and Tinley Park’s The Boulevard at Central Station, adjacent to the Oak Park Avenue train station.
A study done for Homewood identified the possibility of as many as 200 residential units being developed near the train stations.
“This property (the office building) is maybe 60 feet from the train, so just a short walk,” Hofeld said.
Also, the village purchased the commuter parking lot along Harwood, next to the Metra station and immediately west of the office building.
“There is free parking in the evenings, weekends and holidays, so that is something that could be used should a restaurant locate” at the redeveloped office building, Hofeld said.
The building is in a tax increment financing district Homewood established to spur transit-oriented development downtown, and a developer could be reimbursed, through TIF revenue, for costs such as building demolition.
Another potential site the village is offering for redevelopment is a village owned parking lot, just west of Village Hall at the northeast corner of Harwood and Chestnut Road.
Homewood had also bought some years ago the former Savoia T’Go property at 18136 Dixie Highway, with the half-acre site having the potential of containing a four-story building with 9,000 square feet of commercial space and 24 apartments.
Hofeld said Homewood has a developer interested in the half-acre site but no formal development plans have been proposed.
The same property owner that is selling the office space, Virginia Budny, is selling Homewood the site of the village’s former public library, at 17900 Dixie Highway, with plans to level the building and put a new elevated water tank at the site.
That property will be purchased for $655,000, but construction of a water tank might not occur for a couple of years, Hofeld said.
It would replace a water tower next to Village Hall that Hofeld estimates is “probably 85 years old” and near the end of its useful life.
It has a storage capacity of 250,000 gallons, and the new one would be able to hold about 750,000 gallons of water, he said. An estimate of the cost to build the new tank will be made as the village moves closer to construction.
Building the water tank comes as Homewood prepares to switch its supply of Lake Michigan water from Harvey to Chicago Heights, which could occur early this fall, Hofeld said.
Homewood’s supply agreement with Harvey, which dates to the early 1980s, is set to expire at the end of this year, and the village signed an agreement with Chicago Heights in 2020.
Chicago Heights buys Lake Michigan water from Hammond, Indiana, which it uses for its own municipal supply and also provides water to Ford Heights, Glenwood, South Chicago Heights and Thornton.