Aurora will purchase four downtown buildings in the hopes of finding developers for them.
City Council members voted 11-1 Tuesday night to buy buildings at 61 to 65 E. Downer Place – across the street from City Hall – and at 64 E. Downer Place, a building sandwiched in between the Aurora Alderman’s Office building and Tecalitan Restaurant at Downer Place and Broadway, on the same side of the street as City Hall.
City officials said they are buying the properties with the intent of redeveloping them, or finding uses in keeping with the city’s Downtown Master Plan.
That plan includes support of arts, cultural space, social gathering, hospitality and diverse businesses, according to Alex Minella, a senior planner in the Mayor’s Office of Economic Development.
Minella told aldermen the city does not yet have a specific plan for any of the properties, but will develop a request for proposals for them and other properties downtown.
“It puts us in control of what user comes in,” he said.
He said possible users for the buildings could be restaurants, hospitality or other types of uses that dovetail with the city’s growing entertainment and cultural uses downtown.
“They generate sales and food and beverage taxes,” Minella said.
The three buildings at 61-65 E. Downer are vacant, sandwiched in between two buildings on the ends of the block, at Broadway, and at Water Street.
Two of the buildings held Johno’s Main Surplus store for many years, which closed about 10 years ago. The buildings – about 9,000 square feet – have been vacant and deteriorating all that time.
According to Minella, the property “needs substantial renovation which has been an impediment to its redevelopment.”
“The current owners have had the property for about six years and have not been able to renovate or lease the still boarded-up and vacant property,” he said.
The city plans to purchase the property for $260,000 from owners Gil Law Group, 605 N. Broadway.
The building at 64 E. Downer Place is in good condition, and is mostly leased and in use, Minella said.
He called it a “strategic” property at the entrance to the Downer Place retail and art corridor. It also backs onto Mundy Park.
The city would purchase the property for a total price of $284,975 from owner Margarita Marchan-Mankus, of Lisle.
The purchase would not close until the end of September, when the last of the tenant leases expires, according to Minella.
Part of the discussion has been a request for proposals that would include buildings along Broadway for an overall developer. It could be that businesses along Broadway would be relocated to the Downer Place building.
Ald. John Laesch, at large, the sole vote against purchasing the properties, said the city should first talk to the business owners in the buildings first, particularly along Broadway.
But Minella said any discussion about relocating those businesses has been “hypothetical.”
Mayor Richard Irvin pointed out that the buildings to be purchased generate “no significant tax dollars,” especially the 61 to 65 E. Downer Place buildings, which are vacant. But eventual redevelopment back in private hands could eventually create much more, he said.
slord@tribpub.com