Morton Grove considers TIF district

The Prairie View Plaza shopping center – once the “breadbasket” of Morton Grove – now sits 30 percent empty. Village trustees decided Monday night that it might be worthwhile to invest in its redevelopment.

The board unanimously agreed to get a feasibility study for using tax increment financing to help redevelop the center. The study would be paid for by the center’s owner. The consultant doing the study, Stephen B. Friedman, did a similar study for the successful .

Earlier:

Challenges of the site

The center, at the corner of Dempster Street and Waukegan Road, sees as much as 75,000 cars pass each day on the two major thoroughfares, said village administrator Joseph Wade. But it’s about 50 years old and built in a style that would not be used today.

Much of the center appears to be below grade when seen from Dempster, he said, and the buildings were built with asbestos.

“In 1960, it was the miracle fiber,” he said.

As for the way stormwater was handled, “that was different era,” Wade said.

The TIF idea

The possible changes are big enough – and expensive enough – that the owner would not be able to pay for them using rents from the center. TIF financing works by allowing increased tax revenue to be used to help pay for improvements in the area, while freezing the property taxes collected by other taxing districts.

One of the advantages of the Prairie View Plaza site is that it is next to property owned by the Cook County Forest Preserve District. The forest preserve is next to the Lehigh-Ferris TIF district on the other side, and under state law, the forest preserve property can be used to connect the two TIF districts.

Village President Dan Staackmann said Prairie View Plaza once provided much of the tax revenue for the village.

“It was the breadbasket of the village when E.J. Korvette’s was there,” he said. “Then over the years, it turned into what it is now.”

Part of the problem for municipalities is that sales taxes are not collected on services, such as memberships at the fitness center that is now part of the plaza. When the Illinois sales tax law was written, 60 percent of consumer spending was on goods that were subject to the tax; now only 30 percent of consumer spending is subject to the state sales tax with much of the rest going to pay for services.

Only a first step

The feasibility study is only the first step in the village’s decision on whether to create a TIF district, Wade said. Friedman pointed out that any development plan will likely go through many changes before anything is settled.

“A developer has lots of balls in the air and not until all of the balls have hit the ground do you have a deal,” he said.

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