More Top Picks Best Smart Projectors For Streaming
player ready...The village of Elmwood Park is buying a piece of land on Grand Avenue with the goal of drawing new business to the village.
The Elmwood Park Village Board signed off on a deal Sept. 21 to buy a parking lot owned by the Elmcrest banquet hall, on the south side of the 7300 block of Grand Avenue, for $510,000.
The parking lot, which sits across the street from the banquet hall, is 14,500 square feet.
Elmwood Park Village Manager Paul Volpe said the Elmcrest will rent the parking lot back from the village until the banquet hall can set up a new lot on a vacant property to its west in the 7400 block of Grand Avenue.
Village officials said the new setup should make parking safer for patrons of the banquet hall because they’ll no longer have to cross Grand Avenue to get to their cars.
The village’s new property will become a part of the Grand Avenue Corridor Redevelopment Project Area. The village hopes to attract a new business to the former parking lot.
Elmwood Park Trustee Jonathan Zivojnovic, who’s also president of the Grand Corridor Chamber of Commerce, said the village acquiring the land is a positive step.
“It, ‘A,’ lets us do something with a blighted piece of land, and ‘B,’ control a piece of land we can use for future development,” he said. “It’s very essential to the development of Grand Avenue.”
Zivojnovic said he’d love to have some business that would generate sales tax revenue for the village.
“Some type of retail or restaurant,” he said. “We want something that will draw people to the community and spend money.”
Volpe agreed.
“Something that will generate traffic to the area,” he said. “That’s good for the development of Grand Avenue.”
Twitter: @DavidDPollard