Ahead of potential developers’ bids for the two village-owned properties being due at the end of May, Brookfield officials have agreed to look into tearing down the Theater Building and a neighboring house at 3717-23 Grand Blvd.
After acquiring the properties late last year, Brookfield is looking for a new owner to put in mixed-use development in order to economically bolster Grand Boulevard and the central business district there.
“The goal now is to get the site prepared for future development, so as part of that, it’s clearing it and having it what’s called ‘shovel-ready,’ removing any risk of having vacant or underutilized buildings stay there until the full development,” Community Development Director Libby Popovic told village trustees at their committee of the whole meeting on April 14.
While Popovic initially asked trustees to approve the solicitation of bids to demolish the two buildings, she agreed to have staff solicit, as an alternative option, bids from companies offering deconstruction, wherein structures are carefully taken apart so materials can be recovered and reused in future construction projects.
“Because people were very excited about the brick and the facade, and both of those [buildings] are brick, I’m curious if you would consider looking at, or have looked at, a deconstruction company,” Trustee Katie Kaluzny said. “Since we own it, we can take it apart sustainably instead of [it] going all in the landfill.”
She said quotes from deconstruction companies would likely be higher than those from demolition companies.
She and Trustee Jennifer Hendricks spoke in favor of keeping a tree between the two existing properties that Popovic recommended be removed as part of the demolition.
“If nothing happens there for a year or so, it still is providing shade in a nice space for a little bit longer, and that [removal] could happen at a separate time,” Kaluzny said.
“I completely agree with the idea of just leaving the tree there because we don’t technically know what [the development] is from here, and it is providing shade,” Hendricks said. “If having to take down one single tree is going to keep a developer from developing that property, that’s not a developer that we want. It’s just a tree. They can take it down.”
Village Manager Tim Wiberg said improvements to the Grand Boulevard streetscape, which are set to start Monday and will last about four months, will result in more trees being planted along the street than “has ever been out there before,” which will offset the tree’s potential removal. Grand Boulevard will be closed to northbound traffic for the duration of the improvement work.
“If they were to build around that tree, it’s going to greatly reduce the size of whatever they can build, because it’s right halfway between the front and the back,” he said.
As part of the work on Grand Boulevard, Brookfield will seek to have new sanitary and water service lines built out to the site to prepare for the future development, said Dan O’Malley, a project manager for Hancock Engineering, the village’s contracted engineering firm.
“Currently, we’re looking at doing two [new lines], at least for sanitary, just in case, because it’s not a foregone conclusion that it will be one development,” he said.
Trustee Kit Ketchmark emphasized that a potential developer should agree to reimburse the village for the cost of the demolition.
“I certainly don’t think it should be that the village is eating the cost to make it shovel-ready for a developer,” he said.
As the president of the Brookfield Historical Society, Ketchmark told the Landmark April 16 he felt the removal of the Theater Building was warranted.
“If we look at what it’s been for the last 70-plus years, it’s been a manufacturing facility. It’s been car storage. Nothing like a theater,” he said. “If we go back to the early 1900s and picture a booming theater, and the whole neighborhood would be going to the theater to see a movie or a life performance, that would be wonderful to have, but I think we’re past the useful life of the building in that regard. The building’s not in good shape.”
Trustee Edward Côté suggested selling individual bricks from the building to residents if the village pursues deconstruction over demolition.
The request for bid proposals specifies that the eventual developer must incorporate the historic “Brookfield Theater” sign into the new development’s facade.
