The Arlington Heights Village Board authorised two resolutions at its assembly Tuesday evening for consulting contracts meant to investigate the financial and visitors impacts of the doable situation that the Chicago Bears buy and redevelop Arlington Park International Racecourse.
Though no deal has been finalized, the Bears into a purchase order settlement with Churchill Downs, homeowners of the racecourse, to purchase the property.
Hiring the consultants is a definite step ahead within the village’s tenuous back-and-forth with the soccer crew, which on Tuesday launched new plans for an leisure, retail, housing and sporting district it will develop on the 326-acre property.
The two resolutions authorised Tuesday permit for agreements between the village and, individually, Hunden Strategic Partners and Sam Schwartz Consulting LLC. The village would pay Hunden about $118,000 to conduct an financial impression examine, and Schwartz would obtain about $85,000 to have a look at transportation impacts. Each of the research is said to redeveloping the property. Though the resolutions stipulate that the consultants are being employed by and can work for the village, cash to pay for the scholars will come from the Bears.
Village Trustee Jim Tinaglia stated the consulting settlement was a “belt and suspenders to help protect all of us here.” He stated any redevelopment of a website as massive as Arlington International Racecourse would advantage an identical consulting contract.
“This is a big enough project that we would absolutely do this, whether it were the Lions or the Tigers or the Bears,” he stated. “And the funds that are being used are being used out of the escrow funds of the petitioners. So there is no tax money being used.”
The village finance director defined that Arlington Heights can pay the consultants from the village’s capital initiatives fund however be reimbursed by the soccer crew.
According to the memo outlining the request for a guide, village workers need Hunden Strategic Partners, which has workplaces in Chicago, to guage the monetary evaluation of the Bears’ redevelopment proposal, do the guide’s personal evaluation of the plan and consider “all project components to ensure the proposed redevelopment results in a net positive fiscal impact upon Arlington Heights.”
The visitors consulting settlement requires Schwartz, a Chicago-based planning, engineering and design agency, to guage public transit choices for the location, on- and offsite parking prospects, the capability of the location and its rapid environment, and to make suggestions.
In an announcement accompanying the plans and renderings, crew officers say building would create no less than 48,000 jobs and have a $9.4 billion financial impression on the area. Once accomplished, the crew says the mission would create nearly 10,000 everlasting jobs and have a $1.4 billion monetary impression on Chicagoland.
Per its web site, Hunden Strategic Partners, which is led by CEO Rob Hunden, has consulted on racecourse-based initiatives in Baltimore and on the Chicago White Sox’s Guaranteed Rate Field.
Tinaglia requested Planning and Development Director Charles Perkins to “take the Bears out of this equation,” as he requested if the village would nonetheless interact a guide for a distinct potential redeveloper.
Perkins stated sure.
Trustee Mary Beth Canty stated she would stay “agnostic” on whether or not the Bears ought to come to the village till officers answered two questions: “Who is paying for this and how are we moving the people around?”
But Canty stated she welcomed the visitors consulting contract as a strategy to get extra details about the potential transit impression of the stadium.
“This is visceral for me,” she stated, noting that she lives a few mile and a half from the proposed stadium location. “I, myself, am worried.”
Village Manager Randy Recklaus stated the consulting agreements had been meant to make sure that if the Bears do transfer ahead with redeveloping the location, which is beneath a purchase order settlement, that the village would see an actual profit to internet hosting them.
“There have been unsuccessful stadium contracts,” he stated. “We want to make sure that we’re one of the ones that is successful.”
The Bears are scheduled to carry a neighborhood assembly at John Hersey High School Thursday at 7 p.m. to reply residents’ questions on their lately launched plans.
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Source: www.bostonherald.com