Brookfield officials heard a pitch from the second of two firms vying to redevelop the site of the Theater Building along Grand Boulevard.
Shreya Singh and other representatives from Nath Construction spoke before the village board on Monday, March 23, to propose a five-story, mixed-use building with about 2,600 square feet of retail space alongside a lobby and publicly accessible amenity space on the ground floor. Four floors of apartments above would total 40 units with a mix of studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom designs.
After hearing the presentation, trustees did not immediately direct staff on how to proceed with the proposals from Nath or Redwood Construction, which presented its plan for a 20-to-30-unit apartment building or hotel at a meeting on March 9. The village board is expected to reach a consensus and give staff direction soon.
“The base of this building is going to be focused on community access as well as community retail,” Singh said. “Amenity space is typically on the second floor of a residential building, and what we want to do is bring that amenity space down to the ground floor. [For example,] you have a fitness gym on the second floor that’s only limited to residents, but with this, you could have a gym that’s successful for residents and patrons from the community.”
While Singh and other representatives brought three possible configurations for the proposed apartment building, they recommended sticking to 40 units rather than the 50 they included in one design.
Another configuration would have included 40 parking spaces in an underground parking garage beneath the apartments, but Singh said she recommended against it due to the high construction costs of about $317,000 per unit, rivaling rates to buy a home in some parts of town.
“We’re able to squeeze 17 parking spaces inside the building, and we would like to work with the village to identify 10 off-site parking spaces,” Singh said of Nath’s recommended configuration for the building. “Maybe [we could attract] folks who work at local institutions that have one car per household, and then the rest of the units are made up by train commuters.”
While that ratio could leave some residents without a place to park, Singh said she and her team focused on the area’s orientation around transit in the hopes of attracting new residents to the apartments who would make use of the Metra to access downtown Chicago.
In response to Trustee Kyle Whitehead mentioning the difficulty of life without a car in Brookfield, Singh said the building would include a storage area for bicycles.
Singh said Nath would plan to own the building for up to four years after construction before selling it, and, in the meantime, the company would outsource management to a third party.
If Nath is awarded the contract, Singh said the firm would work to start construction in August and finish within a year, meaning new residents could move in as soon as August 2027.
According to Nath’s response to Brookfield’s request for proposals, the firm would not request any funds from the village’s tax-increment financing district downtown. However, it would ask for the Theater Building parcel and adjacent property to be conveyed for free. In total, Nath’s proposal would cost about $12.4 million to build.
Geoffrey Dickinson, a partner at SB Friedman, Brookfield’s TIF consultant, said the firm could work to create TIF revenue projections for both development proposals to show officials how much money each would generate that the village could capture for further improvements to the area.
