In an unusual move, the homeowners association of the 220-home luxury Midwest Club subdivision in Oak Brook paid $1.373 million in December to buy a house on a 2.6-acre parcel that adjoins the subdivision, and the association plans to subdivide the land into three lots, each of which will have access to a street inside the gated subdivision.
It is very rare — if not outright unheard-of — for a subdivision homeowners association to shell out capital to act as a developer. The Midwest Club was developed in the late 1970s on the site of the former 231-acre Midwest Country Club by Amoco’s American Growth Development Corp. subsidiary, which also developed the gated Oak Brook Club development and the gated Burr Ridge Club on the site of a former Boy Scouts training center.
In the case of the Midwest Club, the subdivision was built around the one-story house and 2.6-acre parcel, which faces 35th Street and has never had street access to the gated Midwest Club. The 2.6-acre lot was created as part of an earlier project called Midwest Estates, and the first inhabitants of the 2,334-square-foot house, which was built in 1959, were Dolores Huseman, whose father John Polakovic had owned the Midwest Country Club, and her husband, James Huseman. After Polakovic’s death in 1962, James Huseman managed the Midwest Country Club, and the Husemans sold the house in 1978 to Illinois Pollution Control Board vice chair Irvin Goodman and his wife, Marilyn.
The Midwest Club’s property manager, Rob Day, told Elite Street that the homeowners association was rebuffed in 1995 when it approached the Goodmans seeking to buy the house and 2.6-acre tract on 35th Street. Prior to that, he said, Amoco also had been rejected in the mid-1970s when it tried to buy and include the 35th Street property within the original Midwest Club footprint.
Now, however, a match has been made. Day said that the most recent owners of the 35th Street property approached the Midwest Club about a deal last year, and the subdivision was amenable. To proceed under the Midwest Club’s by-laws, a minimum two thirds vote was required from the subdivision’s 220 homeowners, and that level was reached.
Late last year, the Oak Brook Village Board gave the Midwest Club initial zoning approval to permit the construction of three houses on the site, all of which would face Midwest Club Court 17. The access from 35th Street will be eliminated.
Now, the Midwest Club is preparing to demolish the house. Once final subdivision approval takes place, Day said the three newly created lots will be available for sale — first to Midwest Club members — likely by the end of the summer.
“It’s been a long road, and we’ve finally got the property back to where it was originally intended to be,” Day said. “It’s been a long time coming.”
Rebecca VonDrasek, Oak Brook’s development services director, called the plan “definitely the best option available.”
“We’ve seen quite a few of these large lots sit, but if they’re going to be developed and they can be a part of one of our existing homeowners associations (in the village), it only benefits that homeowners association,” she said. “At one point there was a prospective purchaser who was suggesting a higher density, and the Village Board probably would not have been supportive of that.”
Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
