Downers Grove furniture store gets OK for more signs, later opening Art Van Furniture will have more signs than usually seen when it opens its Downers Grove flagship location sometime next year.Council members approved a proposal from the Michigan-based company to affix more signs to its location at 1021 Butterfield Road. As part of that vote, the council also authorized the store to push back its opening to as late as December 2015. Despite the delay potentially lasting several months, council members repeated their pledge of support for Art Van to set up shop in Downers Grove."This being a flagship store is going to spur economic redevelopment in that whole area," Commissioner Sean P. Durkin said. "This, to me, is a no-brainer." Mayor Martin Tully called the scheduled upgrades "a tremendous aesthetic improvement to that building by any measure.""My only complaint is that we can't get it done sooner because we're very much looking forward to this project," Tully said.
Art Van contracted with the village in November 2013 to locate in the long-vacant, 100,000-square-foot building. As part of the deal, the village agreed to refund half of the sales tax raised by the business for 15 years, or until those payments reach $3.2 million. The rebate was designed to help Art Van offset the high costs of renovating and preparing the two-story building for a furniture store, officials said. In return, Art Van agreed to operate in that location for no less than 20 years, according to the contract terms. Village ordinance ordinarily would allow Art Van to have a total 300 square feet of signage on the building. But council members and village staff said they allowed for more than triple that allowance because of the unusual size and location of the building, and the importance of the store for a major company locating in town.The Art Van logo of a red box will be posted on the main entrance facing Butterfield Road, as well as on the building's south facade facing Interstate 88.
Most of the empty retail spaces were scooped up quickly by grocery competitors like Jewel-Osco, Whole Foods Market and Mariano’s Fresh Market shortly after the Dominick’s locations closed, Crain’s Chicago Business reported early this year.However, 10 stores — which total 700,000 square feet of retail space — are still empty.Now, leaders from more than 20 mostly suburban communities impacted by these losses, including Glen Ellyn and Wheaton, will be meeting next Thursday, Nov. 10 to discuss what to do next to salvage their local economies despite the uninviting blocks of empty stores.“This vacancy has significantly impacted our residents as well as our business community,” said Glen Ellyn Village President Alex Demos. “It is our hope that this meeting will not only bring to light the efforts being made by each community, but to also initiate discussions on how to aggressively more forward and fill these vacancies.”The 72,000-square-foot Dominick’s at 880 Roosevelt Road closed in December 2013.
Village officials have been marketing the space at trade shows and “working tediously with the property ownership” to find a new retail tenant, Megan Plahm, communications coordinator for Glen Ellyn, said in a news release. Elected officials have met with staff with Albertson’s, Jewel Osco’s parent company, to discuss opportunities. “One Call, 10 Stores, a Million Customers” is an advocacy group that consists of 9 communities that banded together in 2014 to land new tenants to occupy those empty retail spaces. With the chunks of dark stores in their communities, the group claims, local economies suffer. Shops that bordered previous Dominick’s locations now get less traffic because there isn’t a big anchor tenant nearby to draw shoppers to their local businesses.The advocacy group represents 10 stores in the suburban area, including in Barlett, Glendale Heights, Bensenville, Glen Ellyn, Wheaton, North Naperville, Woodridge, Oswego, South Naperville and Romeoville, according to its website.
It also provides a coverage map for all 10 locations.Each location has a separate page on the site that details nearby businesses that could draw traffic to the location— in Glen Ellyn that would be Gymboree, American Mattress and Jimmy John’s —and the demographics of the surrounding community. It also included how many cars pass through the area on an average day, which would be 59,300 vehicles per day at the intersection of Roosevelt Road and Bunker Hill Drive, and who leases the retail spaces. Contact information for those brokers is also provided.The vacant 77,000-square-foot Wheaton Dominick’s, located at 92 Danada Square East, is located at the intersection of Butterfield and Naperville Roads. On Butterfield Road, 36,700 vehicles pass through each day while there 22,800 vehicles per day on Naperville Road. Local officials will be meeting in a public press conference from 1:30-2 p.m. Nov. 10 at Maggiano’s Little Italy in Naperville. The meeting point is located at 1847 Freedom Dr.--Anicka Slachta (Patch Staff) contributed to this articlePhoto courtesy of "One Call, 10 Stores, a Million Customers'" website.