The future of the property on the southeast corner of East Burlington Street and Delaplaine Road looks assured. As early as this week, the Village of Riverside is expected to grant a building permit for nine townhomes to occupy the site, which was home to a service station for decades.
“It looks good,” said Village Manager Kathleen Rush. “It’s a very nice product and is something different. It’s a nice upgrade for that corner.”
The three-story, brick, Colonial style development, called Delaplaine Crossing, will be marketed as an upscale, low-density plan with prices for units in the $380,000 to $500,000 range. According to developer Glen Pennington, two of the units have already been sold”the 2,200-square-foot corner unit at over $500,000 and one of the smaller two-bedroom units at just over $400,000.
What makes the development “low density,” said Pennington is that the plan allows for significant green space, roughly 9,000 square feet of green space out of the 22,000-square-foot site.
“This is everything the village wanted,” said Pennington, a Riverside resident who has completed several new single-family home projects in the village.
“There’s more setback, more side yard and more rear yards.”
Construction on the townhomes will begin within two weeks of getting the go-ahead from village hall, with a proposed completion date of October. Since the development will not require any variations to the zoning code, it will not need to be reviewed by any village commission or the village board.
Originally, Pennington proposed a 20-unit condominium building for the site, and had applied for a building permit for that plan. The village turned him down, and his architect was able to come up with this alternative, which will be nearly as profitable, he said.
“The profit margin would have been better with condos, but I think with this, our percentages are very close,” Pennington said. “The key is we want our development to start now; we don’t want to wait a year.”
Pennington also said that the townhomes will provide each buyer with more living space in addition to yards and private garages. Condos would have also required variances which, if not granted, would have made the condo units roughly 1,100 square feet.
“That wasn’t going to make it,” Pennington said.
Plans for the development show the townhomes wrapping around the corner site, with four each facing Delaplaine and Burlington and one corner unit. Six units (over 1,750 square feet) are larger two-bedroom units that include an option for a third bedroom on the ground floor. Two of the units are strictly two-bedroom units (at just under 1,700 square feet), while the corner unit is a three-bedroom unit.
The corner unit and six larger two-bedroom units each include an attached two-car garage at the rear, while the two smaller two-bedroom units have one-car attached garages. Entry into the development will be from a new 24-foot driveway off Delaplaine Road. In addition to the private garages, there will be six visitor spaces in the rear of the property.
Pennington said the other reason for favoring townhomes rather than condos is news that condos are being currently proposed in downtown Riverside at two locations, the former Henninger Pharmacy site and the Arcade Building. Building townhomes offers buyers something not as readily available in the village, he said.
“This product just doesn’t exist in this area,” Pennington said. “This is the development we want.”
