It’s always a welcome sign when affordable housing is a priority in a community. Unless one considers a six-bedroom home affordable.
That’s what a major area homebuilder has planned for a piece of the Walgreens property in Deerfield. In addition to four to six bedrooms, the 42 single-family homes to be built by Atlanta-based Pulte Group Inc., also will include space for between two and four garages. Those are apparently for the storage of affordable vehicles.
Pulte announced it will purchase the land from drugstore giant Walgreens Boots Alliance, seek to rezone 18 acres of the company’s 40-acre corporate campus from industrial to residential, and raze three buildings on the site. According to Chloe Hilles’ front-page News-Sun story last month, that’s about a third of the Walgreens’ headquarters property at Wilmot Road, off the Tri-State Tollway.
Deerfield officials have said at least three of the homes in the tony-sounding Leclair Estates will be affordable — don’t expect they will have six bedrooms or four garages — in order to meet the village’s housing guidelines. Area history buffs may know Leclair was the original name of Deerfield Township back in the mid-19th century founding of Lake County, so the Pulte folks did their homework.
The residential plans surfaced after Deerfield officials decided to ban the construction of logistic centers, aka warehouses. Seems like the village’s brush last year with steely opposition to plans to turn the 101-acre Baxter International headquarters across the Tri-State from Walgreens into a logistics center and industrial use was too much for them, despite the plans later being dropped.
After all, who wants to be known as home to industrial sprawl or as Warehouse City? Certainly not upscale Deerfield.
That Warehouse City tag doesn’t seem to bother some communities that have embraced large-scale logistics centers. In Libertyville, two substantial warehouses are under construction at Route 45 and Peterson Road, the site of the lamented Aloha Falls mini-golf course, in a corridor of manufacturing and industrial firms.
With more and more firms eschewing offices in favor of remote work, or a combo of in-office and distant, there’s a rising glut of once-attractive suburban corporate locales. Walgreens, housed in Deerfield since 1975, is following suit and shedding its home-based property as a cost-cutting move.
Taking the place of those prime location, white-collar offices are repurposed last-mile football-field-size warehouses and e-commerce fulfillment centers.
Except apparently in Deerfield.
According to commercial real estate experts, 70 large warehouses were built in Chicagoland last year, eclipsing records set in 2021 and 2022. Can vertical warehouses be far behind?
Some logistics managers, however, indicate the once-booming warehouse market is seeing signs of contraction. One hinted her company is struggling to fill buildings as businesses return to just-in-time strategies rather than stockpiling inventories.
For Deerfield, whose Village Board members amended zoning laws restricting freight terminals, truck depots, and logistic and fulfillment centers last month, it’s another step in scrapping the town’s industrial past. The village once was home to Solo Cup, Sara Lee and an Allis-Chalmers/Fiat-Allis tractor factory, among others, which provided good-paying jobs and a balanced tax base. Two years ago, the village lost the headquarters of Caterpillar Inc. to a Dallas suburb.
Similar warehouse bans have been adopted in parts of Southern California, Georgia and New Jersey, along with other states, according to Costar, an online real estate news and data firm based in Washington, D.C. Residents close to warehouse projects have been vocal in opposition, like those Riverwoods residents who battled the Baxter plans last year.
Some near the former Allstate property off the Tri-State, south of Willow Road, also are none-too-happy with the underway conversion of the 232 acres into a logistics campus. Others are urging Glenview and Northbrook officials to follow Deerfield’s lead to ban future warehouses.
Meanwhile, Pulte proposes that new homes in Leclair Estates will range in size from 2,722 to 3,899 square feet. They will sit on about 9,000 square feet of land, and probably be surrounded by sound barriers to dull the pitch of semi-trailer rigs traversing the Tri-State.
Pulte hopes to start construction in early 2025, and finish the project by 2028. That would be a similar timetable to the company’s 55-plus Briargate community in Lindenhurst off Route 45, south of Sand Lake Road.
Homes there start in the mid-$300,000 price range. Promises of bocce and pickleball courts, and a community center, are attracting a steady string of buyers.
Pickleball courts would be a fine amenity for Leclair Estates. Unlike in other communities, complaints of noise from players and their games would be drowned out by those semis, looking for spots to unload their cargoes, roaring up and down the tollway.
Charles Selle is a former News-Sun reporter, political editor and editor.
sellenews@gmail.com
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