Arlington Heights Mayor Thomas Hayes talked about the village has obtained questions and points regarding the Chicago Bears’ newest utility for a demolition permit at Arlington Worldwide Racecourse, prompting the mayor to elucidate on the Village Board meeting Monday night why the request is being considered.
“The village doesn’t have any authority to withhold approval of demolition for any purpose if the applying is full and the property house owners’ demolition plans adjust to the village code,” Hayes talked about on the meeting.
He and completely different Village Board members talked about the village is “100% dedicated” to transparency as a result of the village and workers navigate the early phases of what is likely to be a behemoth enterprise on the outdated racetrack.
The Bears closed on the 326-acre racecourse website online in February, then utilized Might 3 to tear down the enduring grandstand. The workers has proposed setting up a multibillion buck NFL stadium and adjoining mixed-use industrial, residential and leisure district on the internet web site — although the group has not however devoted to any explicit thought for the property.
Hayes talked about if the village approves the permit, a schedule for the tear-down work will flip into public.
Nonetheless, he talked about, the Village Board doesn’t have a process inside the consider of approval of demolition functions. Village Supervisor Randy Recklaus later confirmed that the village Constructing and Life Security Division would coordinate processing for an utility to demolish the grandstand.
A village spokeswoman beforehand knowledgeable Pioneer Press the workers’s utility “is being routed by means of a number of departments for overview. This is similar course of that any demolition allow would undergo.”
Recklaus talked about Monday night the road to approval would seemingly be a few weeks or a month prolonged and would include some backwards and forwards discussions.
“They may can be found with a plan, we’ll say ‘how about you repair this?,’ he talked about.
The Bears filed paperwork with the village the day after Prepare dinner County Assessor Fritz Kaegi raised the value of the property to about $197 million, though workers officers have talked about the timing of the making use of and the assessor’s change in valuation weren’t related. The attainable change inside the price of the property would possibly improve the workers’s property tax bill to $16 million — up from $2.8 million when the racetrack was last in operation.
Trustee Jim Tinaglia took Hayes’ assertion as one different probability to stress the village’s efforts at transparency as a result of the Bears and completely different native authorities our our bodies take the first tentative steps in direction of redeveloping the property.
“I feel prior to now, there have been questions on what we all know, what we don’t know — possibly holding again info,” Tinaglia talked about, deeming the demolition functions as “only one extra step within the course of.”
Within the meantime, “we’re doing all that we will to be as clear as attainable about every little thing that’s occurring on the market,” he talked about.
Residents have to this point come sooner than the board accusing trustees of taking side benefits from the workers as negotiations proceed.
Village leaders have strongly denied these accusations. They’ve moreover repeatedly rejected choices that the village plans to produce the workers public funding for a development, saying the Bears will solely get tax breaks if the village determines the enterprise will probably be an online monetary obtain for residents.
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