The Skokie Village Board gave final approval for Westfield Old Orchard Shopping Center’s $100 million redevelopment plans at its Dec. 2 meeting.
The redevelopment will include apartments to be rented at rates that meet affordable criteria, and Patrick Deignan, the village’s Communications and Community Engagement Director, said it is so far the only mall redevelopment in the Chicago area to include affordable units.
The redevelopment will be taken on by the mall’s owner, Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, in partnership with the construction group Focus, to create 425 apartments, 16,625 square feet of retail and restaurant space and open space in the first phase of construction.
According to the village’s approval of the plans, the first phase permit applications process must begin no later than one year, and the second phase permit applications process must begin no later than seven years.
The second phase of construction will include a seven-story mixed-used building with 200 apartments and an eight-story mixed-use building that could house either a 200-room hotel or another apartment building with 125 units.
Any celebration of the new phase of the village’s economic engine was muted by critics who said the village should have done more to push Westfield to portion out more than 3.5% of the development’s 625 to 850 apartment units at affordable rates.
Because Westfield submitted its redevelopment proposal to the Village Board in February before the board approved and adopted its affordable housing ordinance in May, the proposal did not need to adhere to the ordinance that would otherwise require it to rent 7% of the development’s units at rates affordable to households that earn between 60% and 80% of the area’s median income.
Westfield Old Orchard Shopping Center in Skokie will be adding up to 200,000 square feet of healthcare space, and has several stores and restaurants opening or relocating. The renderings suggest what the future developments might look like. (Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield)
Trustee James Johnson accused the rest of the Village Board of dragging its feet to adopt the ordinance with the intent of allowing Westfield to submit its proposal without having to adhere to the affordability requirements. Trustees Khem Khoeun and Edie Sue Sutker and Mayor George Van Dusen adamantly rejected that notion.
“I do not think it is at all fair to say the Skokie Village Board dragged its feet for a year purposefully because we had Westfield in mind,” Van Dusen said. “That is just a simply incredibly unfair, very unfair, allegation to make,” he said.
Sutker said, “I find it insulting that you’re saying we dragged our feet. We could not agree (on an ordinance). Some of us voted the same way each time it came up for affordable housing, but we could not agree and we ended up compromising and that’s what delayed it. Not because of Westfield.”
The Village Board approved an affordable housing ordinance in May on a 4-3 vote after the Board debated the subject for 18 months and rejected three previous drafts.
At the village board’s first reading of the approval in October, the grassroots organization Skokie Neighbors for Housing Justice blasted both Westfield’s proposal and the Village Board, demanding that the development raise its rate of affordable housing to 15% of all units. At Monday’s meeting, three people spoke in opposition to the development, demanding that the Village Board ask for more affordable housing from Westfield.
At that meeting, Vic Howell, the vice president of Focus, the construction group, said adding more affordable units would be economically unfeasible. Previously he had said the affordable units were added after taking community feedback into account.
In Old Orchard’s proximity, other shopping malls have also started construction or received permits to redevelop.
In Niles, the Village Board approved awarding the owner of the Golf Mill Shopping Center up to $96 million in tax increment financing in June to redevelop the mall in a two phase redevelopment expected to cost $440 million, according to previous reporting. Up to 900 luxury apartment units across three buildings are planned for that development. The existing mall’s interior will be demolished, but the mall’s existing anchor stores will remain open, according to a spokesperson from the village of Niles.
In Vernon Hills, Focus is also working with the development group Centennial Real Estate, the owner of the Hawthorn Mall, to redevelop the mall, according to previous reporting. Hundreds of housing units, including apartments and townhouse-style units, are expected to be built in the mall’s redevelopment.
