Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Patch's Community Forum on the Plaza re-development is this Thursday. Where will you be?
There used to be – and maybe there still is – an old signboard ad for The Plaza on a building near the 99th Street Metra station in Beverly. It reads "the plaza IS the place. 95th & WESTERN." The sign is old and the boards are buckling in places. It obviously harks back to an earlier time when the Plaza was The Place. When I saw it, it reminded me of those faded mural ads for long-gone stores that you see on buildings in Chicago. Like the Boston Store "ghost sign" on the north façade of the 1 North Dearborn building (which, in fact, used to be the Boston Store). They are reminders of times gone by, happier times for some. While they last, the faded signs are also reminders that times change, and often there is no going back to the way …
Monday, June 11, 2012
We couldn't be happier from the concerned citizens who supported our first open forum in November. Join us for a forum that will exclusively discuss development of The Plaza on June 28.
Thursday, June 7, 2012
This week's question from The Evergreen Parker is "To strip mall or not to strip mall?" Join the conversation and meet us at our next forum on June 28 discussing The Plaza.
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Sooner or later every type of development has to weather a downturn. Strip malls can look particularly ragged. Is that what we want for The Plaza?
If you drive west out Illinois Highway 38, near where Geneva and St. Charles meet, you'll find an empty parcel of land, just east of Randall Road. Weeds poke through where the asphalt has cracked. The land has been scraped, save for a couple of outlot stores that are now empty, too. It's just sitting there. It looks horrible. It used to be the 294,000-square-foot St. Charles Mall. The mall opened in 1979 and was fairly successful until another mall opened across town. By 1996 the last tenant had closed at the mall. The structure was torn down. Since then, local officials have been trying to figure out what to do with it. Meanwhile, it's an eyesore of a parking lot, a flat, broken monument to a one-dimensional mode of development with no …
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
We couldn't be happier from the concerned citizens who supported our first open forum in November. Join us for a forum that will exclusively discuss development of The Plaza on June 28.
Everyday I have the pleasure of meeting concerned citizens who truly want to affect change in Evergreen Park. To date, one of the hottest topics among you have been The Plaza Shopping Center, its blight and what Evergreen Parkers want to see done in the space. We'd like to hear more of your development ideas for the space in our upcoming forum. Sign up for our newsletter for daily and breaking news, deals and additional information on Evergreen Park. Long before the nearly 60-year-old Plaza went under contract to be sold in February, it was a bustling, active development, known to be one of the first enclosed malls in the country. As indoor mall trends slowly died, interest in retailers declined and the economy tanked, owners of the mall …
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
The Evergreen Parker discusses his reasons for promoting traditional town planning in the village.
I'm not a pessimist by nature, at least I never used to be. Most days I think things are pretty good as they are and I suspect there's a good chance they'll be better tomorrow, given our ability to learn and grow and adapt. But in my day job I deal with a lot of people in finance, people who have been participating or studying the capital markets for a long time. When they get worried, I figure it's time for me to pay attention to what they're worried about. They're worried about a lot of things, but mostly they're worried about debt, and what happens with people and governments can't pay back what they've borrowed. Debt gets spread around to a lot of places. So when there's a default, the effects are felt far beyond the original lender …
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Northbrook-based GMX Real Estate Group gave Trustees and residents a presentation of its proposed redevelopment plan for The Plaza, that would revert it to its original open-air mall roots, restore “Evergreen” to the name and bring more jobs to town.
Residents have long awaited a remedy for the once-bustling, now-blighted Plaza, and although a deal still technically has not been confirmed, the village heard one option for change Monday night. GMX Real Estate Group, currently under contract to buy The Plaza’s $20 million mortgage foreclosure note, presented a preliminary plan to restore The Plaza, 9500 S. Western Ave., to its original open-air roots that existed nearly 60 years ago. Current managing and general partner of the mall, The Provo Group previously had plans to do the same thing, but couldn't raise the funds to do so. “Our plans would be to scrape the mall and start anew,” said Andy Goodman, principal at the Northbrook-based GMX Real Estate Group, whose core business involves …
How The Evergreen Parker tried (but ultimately failed) to love the proposal to redevelop The Plaza.
When I saw the news on Patch that the group proposing to redevelop the decaying Plaza shopping center was to make a presentation at Monday night's [April 16] village board meeting, I couldn't help but be a little excited. After all, this is the property everyone in town, and Beverly for that matter, has been talking about. The Plaza is falling apart. It is desperately in need of redevelopment, and the village – I won't say desperately needs, but certainly could use the incremental sales and property tax revenue a revitalized Plaza would bring. So this was a big moment, a chance to see the vision of the team that hopes to bring the Plaza back to life. I went into the meeting wanting to like what I saw. I was willing to give whatever I saw …
Monday, April 16, 2012
Trustees and residents will hear a presentation on The Plaza redevelopment plan at Monday's village board meeting.
The Board of Trustees and Mayor James Sexton will hold the next village board meeting this evening. The meeting will start at 7:30 p.m. and will be in Council Chambers of Village Hall. See what's on the agenda before you go. On the Agenda: Members of the audience are invited to speak during the open public forum. The board says to limit comments to three minutes.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
The pending sale of The Plaza shopping center represents the best opportunity we may get in our lifetimes to rid the village of this albatross of a development
So it looks like the run-down Evergreen Plaza Shopping Center mall will be sold. This opens a whole spectrum of possibilities for the site, many of them exciting but some of them potentially stomach-turning. Among the exciting possibilities is the chance to turn the old Plaza property into a true downtown-type village center serving Evergreen Park and nearby suburbs, and the Chicago communities to the east. The possibility that makes me queasy is the likelihood that The Plaza will merely be given a facelift and remain the dead weight of old-style development it has become. But let's not let ourselves be dragged down by reality quite yet. The mere rumor that there is a pending sale of The Plaza property on the southwest corner of 95th St. …
Patricia welsh
7:00 pm on Thursday, June 28, 2012
Just a couple of thoughts to keep in mind. I do love the ideas presented, but we have to remember that while the board does approve the plans, they don't own the property. The owner will determine what makes the best fiscal sense given size, space, accessibility, etc and build what will return a profit. Also, the neighborhoods that were cited as models for this style of development are in much … more ›