Morton Grove has agreed to partner with the Regional Transportation Authority to develop a plan to increase sales taxes on Dempster Street, amain thoroughfare in the village.
The Village Board voted unanimously on Aug. 27 to accept a grant of up to $200,000 to create the Dempster Street Corridor Plan in tandem with the RTA. Morton Grove must contribute 20%, or up to $40,000, as part of the RTA’s Community Planning program.
The grant will be used to hire a consultant to develop long-range planning for the Dempster Street corridor to support Morton Grove’s strategic plan, Village Administrator Chuck Meyer said.
Village President Dan DiMaria said that essentially the goal is to discover ways to increase sales taxes in the commercial corridor.
“That is exactly what it means,” DiMaria said. “We want to go with businesses that are going to generate sales tax, not just businesses that generate property taxes. That is important, but we want businesses that generate property taxes and sales taxes.”
Morton Grove staff will work with RTA officials to develop a scope of work and draft an intergovernmental agreement to bring to the Village Board, Meyer said.
“We saw an opportunity to partner with local agencies to get a view of one of our most important corridors and get perspective,” Meyer said. “We want to study how we can best utilize that space for the community.”
Morton Grove officials will work with RTA staff to identify what the village needs to do to attract businesses and improve the stretch of Dempster from Central Avenue to just west of Waukegan Road, DiMaria said.
“We’re going to have these dialogues,” he said. “We want to work together and look at it as a whole. We’re going to ask, ‘What can we do to make it better?’ We want to make it better or change things to match current times.”
Although vacancy rates on Dempster are lower today than in recent years, some of the spaces have been filled by establishments that don’t generate sales taxes, DiMaria said.
“Moving forward, you want to maximize your return on investment,” he said. “You have to ask, ‘What can you get for revenue in the limited space that we have?’”
During the development of the plan, Morton Grove officials will identify businesses that generate revenue, DiMaria said.
“It could take a year,” he said. “It could be three years. It depends on how they come. Vacancies do nobody any good. When we fill them, we want to make sure we’re getting the maximum we can out of those spaces.”
Brandon Nolin, community development administrator for the village, said the yearlong planning process will formally kick off in 2025.
“We’re looking to encourage as much communication as we can,” Nolin said. “We want to make sure the community has input in what we can get out of this plan. We’re trying to establish a long-term plan for Dempster that taps into the knowledge we have and advances health in the corridor.”
Morton Grove wants to make sure officials take a “complete approach” to how they think about Dempster and the corridor surrounding it, he said.
“We want to dovetail with economic development goals,” Nolin said. “This is for commuters and economic development. We want to tap into this as an economic development engine for the village.”
Nolin confirmed that sales taxes will be a key part of the plan’s focus.
“It’s no secret municipalities are dependent on retail sales for a lot of revenue,” he said. “With not a lot of real estate available, we have to maximize that return on investment. How do we leverage that as an asset to determine the type of development the community wants to see?”
In anticipation of the study, the Village Board approved a moratorium, effective Aug. 27, on new zoning variations, special uses, planned use developments and vacations for any non-sales-tax-generating uses on Dempster.
