The 10-year vacant grocery store on the corner of Wolf Road and Burlington Avenue in Western Springs is scheduled for a long overdue facelift. Briefly famous as one of the sets for the major motion picture “Contagion,” Tischler Finer Foods and Breen’s Cleaners are back into the limelight as the Foxford Station plan, coupled with Tax Increment-Financing (TIF), begins to unfold.

The Foxford Station plan proposes to demolish the abandoned grocery store and dry cleaners and develop a four-story, mixed-use building in its place. Mixed-use is classified as commercial and residential use. On the first floor, there will be 3,600 square feet of commercial space along with 66 indoor ground-level parking spots to cater to the three-story, 52-unit luxury apartment complex above.

“Personally, I think a restaurant would be fantastic [in the commercial space],” Director of Community Development Martin Scott said. “In our community, people come out to support restaurants, so it would be great for our economy as well.”

Out of consideration of blending into the Western Springs downtown landscape, the fourth floor will be pushed back six feet, creating the illusion of a three-story building.

In order to be able to pay for Foxford Station and other downtown improvements, the village has proposed using TIFs. This plan would freeze the existing property tax for each individual property in the tax district at a base rate. Then, over 23 years, the village will gradually increase the tax on top of the base rate, and that money goes directly into the TIF fund.

“The fund helps go back and reimburse a developer, building owner or a business owner to help them succeed,” Scott said. “It will help their building look better. This will help fill it rather than have it be vacant. And some of that money can also be used by the village to fix sewers or to fix roads.”

However, there has been strong opposition to this plan. The purpose of a TIF is for distressed industrial urban downtown and industry blighted areas, not for high-density housing. By definition, Western Springs is not poverty-stricken. Since the Tischler’s and Breen’s property have been vacant for 10 years, they have a relatively low property tax.

“Fifty-two households will need police and fire protection and send their kids to school, but none of the increased tax on that property will go to the school system,” Western Springs citizen William Derrah said. “It’s a way of ripping off the school district. It’s a way of getting a tax increase out of the village that nobody will see, because we will all have to pay for the services for these 52 rental households. Meanwhile the village board gets the diverted tax money and can spend it on projects.”

Along with Senate Bill 16, which calls for suburban public high schools like LT to reallocate money to the lower income public school districts, this potential loss in revenue might make school budget cuts that much more difficult.

If the Tischlers and Breen’s stores are demolished, the Western Springs First Baptist Church parking will be affected too.

“All of the asphalt between Tischler and Breen property has, since 1960, been permitted during business hours to use our parking spots and vice versa,” Spiritual Leadership Council member Don Whittaker said. “Now we are losing spots, because the west wall of this building will come down right on our property line, and we will lose 60 percent of the existing parking.”

The two organizations have come to a compromise: the developer of the Foxford Station will create angled parking along 45th street to help combat the loss of spots.

Several citizens made a survey and tried to circulate it throughout the Western Springs community a week before the public hearing on Feb. 13. Out of the 838 residents interviewed, 68 percent were against the MXD zoning plan, which applies to the Foxford Station development. Seventy-three percent wanted family housing to be kept at “medium density” which, according to the preferred 2011 downtown plan, is 17-30 units per acre.

The project was passed by the village board on Feb. 23, despite the citizens’ protests.

View the Feb. 23 board meeting here: