The Skokie Plan Commission approved the construction of hundreds of new apartments at the upscale shopping mall Westfield Old Orchard Thursday evening, the latest step in its transformation into a 24/7 mixed-use community.
The five and seven-story residential buildings will replace an empty Bloomingdale’s on the mall’s north side and sit beside a new town square, roughly half an acre where residents, shoppers and Skokie neighbors can mingle while attending concerts, farmers’ markets, holiday celebrations and other events.
Owner Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield first unveiled its multi-phase redevelopment plan for the historic mall in 2022. The company envisioned building Skokie a new downtown by ditching traditional big-box retailers in favor of new homes, smaller stores, restaurants, medical and wellness facilities, a hotel and the town square.
“We’ve been lining this up for some time,” Stephen Fluhr, Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield’s senior vice president of development, told the Tribune. “The new multifamily development will bring residents to an amenity-rich environment that is also very pedestrian friendly.”
The plan still needs approval from the Village of Skokie’s Board of Trustees, which could happen as early as September.
The rise of online commerce decimated many department stores, which either shut down or required less space, Fluhr said, so the 68-year-old property needed a change. Bloomingdale’s shuttered its three-story, 200,000-square-foot store in 2022 and moved into a new Old Orchard space one-fourth that size. Called Bloomie’s, it only sells the retailer’s top products. The owners also reconstructed the former Lord & Taylor store, creating spaces for artisanal furnishings brand Arhaus, Spain-based clothing store Zara, and Puttshack, a high-tech mini golf outlet.
“Some brands fade over time and need to be replaced,” Fluhr said. “We’ve found that you can chop up these big boxes, find new users, and at the same time, significantly increase the sales.”
URW plans to break ground, along with its partner, Chicago-based developer Focus, on up to 425 residences in 2025, completing construction by 2027, he added. A second phase of up to 250 units and a 200-key hotel will follow. The result will be a new Skokie neighborhood, one that provides retailers with a built-in customer base.
“This is not a discussion about a dead mall, it’s a discussion about how we keep Old Orchard a retail flagship destination,” Fluhr said. “We believe we’re on track to be the winner on the North Shore.”
Other Chicago-area malls are undergoing similar overhauls.
The Niles Village Board in 2023 approved an agreement with the Sterling Organization for a $440 million renovation of Golf Mill Shopping Center. The developer plans to gut the interior, add or renovate up to 500,000 square feet of retail space, and build up to 900 units of new housing.
Focus has already built hundreds of apartments at existing suburban malls, including Hawthorn Mall in Vernon Hills and the Fox Valley shopping mall in Aurora.
Several Skokie residents spoke at the plan commission meeting, and while generally supportive of URW, especially its plan to include EV chargers, solar power and other environmentally friendly features at Old Orchard, they said they still hope to see more affordable housing.
“I think this is a brilliant way of addressing the issues with retail,” said Cathy White, a homeowner who has lived next to Old Orchard for 27 years. “But it is really important for us to make a place for people to live in the area. There are people at Old Orchard, clerks, who are already asking about, gosh, I would like to live here, this makes sense, I won’t have to commute.”
The Skokie Village Board approved in May, after 18 months of debate, an affordable housing ordinance that requires developers building more than 150 units to set-aside 7% as affordable, and lower percentages for smaller projects.
The Old Orchard project is not subject to the new ordinance because its proposal was submitted to village staff in February, but Vic Howell, vice president of development at Focus, told commission members that the developers recently rewrote their financing plan to make room for some affordable housing.
“We understood the passion the community has for it, so we did sharpen our pencils,” he said.
The developers will reserve 3.5% of the units in the 425-unit first phase, or 15 in total, for renters earning between 60% and 80% of the area median income, the standard used in Skokie’s new ordinance.
“It sounds from what we’re hearing tonight that (the developers) are amenable to some kind of negotiation with the village,” activist and founder of the group Skokie Neighbors for Housing Justice Gail Schechter told commission members. “I look forward to hearing more.”
Not everyone was satisfied. Skokie Village Board Trustee James Johnson said he would not support the project when it comes up for final approval unless the developers agree to a significant boost in affordable housing. He pointed out that other cities, such as Chicago, often require developers to include far more affordable units than Skokie.
“If the Village is going to go to such great lengths to support Westfield,” he said, “then Westfield should fully comply with the minimal affordable housing requirements in Skokie’s inclusionary housing policy.”
