Lake County planning officials and the mayors of North Barrington and Hawthorn Woods have come up with a scaled back plan for a new shopping center in unincorporated Lake County, but the property owners haven’t signed off on it.
After local officials and residents objected to a plan for a commercial development near U.S. Highway 12 and Old McHenry Road, county officials postponed public hearings on the issue and met in private with the leaders of the two neighboring villages. The talks resulted in the new ideas for the proposed development that county officials say are sensitive to the concerns of neighbors, yet fair to the DiMucci family, which owns the property.
“This was an opportunity for the local jurisdictions to talk about what their terms were,” said Eric Waggoner, director of planning, building and development for Lake County. “We think they’re reasonable terms.”
The mayors and county are asking the DiMucci family to reduce the total floor area of its proposed development from 800,000 square feet to 450,000 square feet of retail. The property owner could have the option of building up to 650,000 square feet if the additional area is devoted only to “local service-oriented uses such as restaurants, entertainment, local commercial service, neighborhood-oriented uses and general office,” according to a county news release.
The proposal also emphasizes detached buildings with pedestrian-oriented features, setbacks to reduce building bulk and limits on parking deck height, according to the county.
Waggoner said the proposed parameters are considerably stricter than what would be permitted under a rezoning of the property to strictly commercial. They also are more in line with an intergovernmental agreement between the villages of North Barrington and Hawthorn Woods, which was intended to outline development guidelines should the property ever be annexed, Waggoner said.
The Lake County Zoning Board of Appeals is scheduled to meet at 5 p.m. Sept. 6 at Concorde Banquets, 20922 N. Rand Road, in Kildeer to discuss the new developments.
The terms outlined by the mayors and the county have been sent to the DiMucci family, Waggoner said. Mark Eiden, the family’s lawyer, said he hasn’t yet talked with the DiMuccis about the specifics of the proposal.
“They stated they’re glad the three units of government are talking with each other and appear to have reached some common ground,” Eiden said.
Whether the DiMuccis are receptive to the ideas is another matter. The family previously tried to develop the property in the 1990s and also encountered fierce opposition from neighbors. Eiden said the most recent proposal was a response to concerns expressed in the years since.
But the family did not look favorably at the intergovernmental agreement between North Barrington and Hawthorn Woods, Eiden said. The DiMuccis saw it as too restrictive, and they felt the county was more willing to work with them on a development of the scale proposed, he said.
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