The Homewood village board approved several measures Tuesday as part of a settlement that will bring a controversial distribution warehouse to the property now occupied by Calumet Country Club.
The Homewood village board approved several measures Tuesday as part of a settlement that will bring a controversial distribution warehouse to the property now occupied by Calumet Country Club.
The plan includes the development of a TIF district for the area, a Class 8 Cook County property tax assessment reduction and a $1 million advance on construction costs. The TIF district will require a review and public hearing.
The advance would be reimbursed to the village through the TIF district. If all of the details of the settlement aren’t completed by May 12, Homewood would pay a $250,000 penalty.
“I’ve lost a lot of sleep over this,” Mayor Richard Hofeld said. “We’ve attempted to mitigate this as best we could.”
The board approved each item 6-0 but called it a “solemn day” in which they had to “make the best of a bad situation.”
“I’ve been a member of local government, working on boards for 46 years and during that time I’ve made an awful lot of very difficult decisions. This ranks right up at the top three of those decisions,” Trustee Larry Burnson said. “We didn’t get to this final point lightly. I, like other trustees, only finalized my decision in the last month or so that this was probably the only way we could go.”
The developer, Diversified Partners of Arizona, petitioned in 2019 to see the land disconnected from Homewood and annexed by Hazel Crest. A court date was set for March 5, and the village felt it was unlikely to see a favorable outcome.
The law requires a parcel of land meet seven requirements to leave a municipality, all of which would be difficult for Homewood to contest. A settlement needed to be made before that court date.
“There are no good options at this point. Short term, for those that have asked, there are no real benefits to the village. There’s no extra tax money or anything else coming in,” Homewood Attorney Christopher Cummings said. “At the same time, there are a lot of downsides. Nobody likes the trucks. Nobody likes the traffic. Nobody likes the noise or all the other things that come along with it. The reality is, though, whether it comes to the village or goes to the village of Hazel Crest, that’s what’s going to happen with this property.”
Cummings said one of Homewood’s objectives was to make sure the property remained within the town, which allows the village board some control over how the land is developed and maintained.
“Our neighbors, the Hazel Crest board, did us no favors,” Trustee Lauren Roman said. “If they were friendly neighbors and supported us from day one, we wouldn’t be here today.”
The residents most directly affected by the development are those in the Governor’s Park neighborhood across 175th Street from the property. To mitigate some of the potential issues, Homewood negotiated zoning requirements including landscaping, building height limits and an eight- to 10-foot berm along the 175th Street border.
“As a person who has friends and neighbors who I care about, some of them who live in Governor’s park, I feel helpless,” Trustee Barbara Dawkins said. “This isn’t a Hallmark movie where the big bad developer comes to town and there’s a meeting (where) all of the sudden the developer says ‘You know what? My bad. I’m going to go away.’ He’s not going away.”
Homewood would like to see the main access point to the property off of Dixie Highway instead of 175th Street. That would put it in Hazel Crest. As part of the settlement, Homewood would reimburse Diversified Partners for up to $100,000 in legal costs if Hazel Crest tries to prevent that from happening.
“After a year and a half, everything has to wrap up. What we were faced with is either we try to work out the best bad deal that we can or we go to trial. If we go to trial and we lose, in that situation the property is disconnected from Homewood and it’s going to end up in the neighboring community,” Cummings said. “Ultimately, what’s going to happen is you’re going to have elected officials in another town making decisions that are going to affect Homewood residents.”
In an email to The Chronicle, Diversified Partners CEO Walt Brown said his firm was glad to have the settlement in place.
“We are excited about bringing jobs and development to Homewood as well as Hazel Crest in the future,” Brown said. “We will do a project that the entire surrounding area is proud of.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified East Hazel Crest as the municipality with jurisdiction over access to the development site from the east. That portion of the land is in Hazel Crest.