The Niles Village Board voted Sept. 11 to buy land for a future park development, calling the special meeting to approve the purchase ahead of a grant application deadline.
The development is planned for a park at 7421 Waukegan Road. The application for the grant was due last Friday, according to village officials.
However, prior to submitting the application, the village had to first own the land. Filco Limited LLC owned the parcel and sold it to Niles for $500,000, according to terms of the sale. The land-buy is the initial step in developing the parcel – which has been empty for decades – and turning it into a “Niles Nature Nook,” the first of a potential series of green spaces in the community.
Village leaders see the project as a rare opportunity.
“We want to make Niles more walkable,” Trustee Craig Niedermaier said after the vote.
He said Niles “desperately” needs open land.
“Over the last 60 years, we’ve been in such a hurry to develop revenue-generating properties that we’ve kind of become a concrete jungle,” he said.
Nevertheless, getting the space has taken time, including years of failed attempts at commercial development. The land had housed Ideal Uniform, a laundry business that closed in 2000. There had not been a tenant since then, despite efforts from Niles officials and the land owner.
“We tried working with the owner, who attempted several ideas including a storage center which no one wanted and wouldn’t have helped develop the space,” said Niedermaier.
Finally, in 2009, the building on the property was torn down, and later the site was remediated for hazardous materials. For years the village tried to lure businesses to the empty space, but nothing ever developed.
Then, in 2023, a local grassroots park advocacy group asked village leaders to develop a park in the spot, a rare new greenspace in a heavily developed village hemmed in by neighboring suburbs and without much free space for new parks. Village officials took to the idea.
The village made the half-million-dollar land purchase with an Open Spaces Land Acquisition Development Grant through the Illinois Department of Natural Resources and is now applying for a $600,000 grant to develop the park.
Officials said construction on the project is projected to begin sometime next year.
Jesse Wright is a freelancer.
