The Village Board meets nearly every other Tuesday evening at 7:30 p.m. in the Sandy Frum Board Room at Village Hall.
This Tuesday's meeting is going to be a banger.
The agenda includes preliminary reviews of two significant downtown development proposals. One is for the Heitman property at Meadow Plaza. The other is for the former Grainger campus on Shermer Road. Also on the agenda: a resolution to initiate a study of a potential downtown Tax Increment Financing district, and a final vote on the Village's first-ever Strategic Plan — all on the same night.
These proposals are likely to draw significant and reasonable objections from some Village residents. But there is a bigger picture at play.
After years of underfunding pensions and delaying badly needed municipal facility upgrades, Northbrook is facing roughly $194 million in costs that need to be addressed over the next decade. Northbrook Court, once a significant sales tax engine, continues a steep decline. And our downtown, while home to some wonderful businesses, lacks the density of neighboring communities and is not a place businesses naturally choose.
If we do not grow our revenue base, that $194 million falls entirely on existing residents.
These proposals would generate new tax revenue and better position downtown for additional retail and restaurant investment over time. There are no perfect answers here, but a do nothing strategy will not work either.
A link to the full agenda is available at the bottom of this post.
What follows is a primer on each agenda item and, at the end, the longer form version of my own take on what it all means for Northbrook.
Meadow Plaza (aka the Heitman Property)
The Heitman family has owned this 6.94-acre site for decades, and the property carries over 65 years of downtown history — opening as Northbrook Meadows Shopping Plaza in November 1959 with anchor tenants like Jewel, Sunset Foods, and Ted Gee's. The more recent history is less nostalgic: a Walgreens that vacated around 2010 but held a corporate lease for years, leaving a ghost storefront with no financial incentive to fill it, and an environmental remediation process tied to original tenant chemicals and fuel tanks that further delayed redevelopment. According to listing materials for the property, ownership spent the last several years clearing out long-term leases to make the land ready for a developer, and the Village Manager formally noted in mid-2024 that multiple developers had been touring the property.
Pulte Home Company will come before the Board for a preliminary hearing to get non-binding feedback on a proposal to tear down the shopping center — Dollar Tree, Ace Hardware, The Bean Bar, Book Bin, all of it — and replace it with three six-story condominium buildings, 50 units each, 150 total for-sale units, plus two commercial parcels along Cherry Lane for future development.
The condos would range from 1,200 to 1,700 square feet, a mix of one- and two-bedroom units with optional dens. Each building has parking on the ground floor with five residential floors above, reaching nearly 70 feet. Twenty-three units would be designated affordable under the Village's Inclusionary Housing requirements. The development includes a riverwalk along the south property line dedicated to the Village.
After the meeting, Pulte will decide whether to file a formal application — based at least in part on the reception from the Board — and if they do, a full public hearing follows.
It is worth noting that in April 2023, the now defunct Economic Strategy Commission recommended that the Village acquire the Heitman property, an idea that did not get very far. So, the Village's leverage is limited to zoning and the approval process. If a developer complies with the zoning code's objective requirements, the Village's ability to simply say no is legally constrained.
The Grainger Property
Grainger is a different story entirely. The former Grainger industrial campus at 1657 Shermer Road has been one of Northbrook's most watched properties since the Village purchased it for $8 million in 2018. Tuesday night, the Board will take two significant votes on its future.
First, after directing the Village Attorney to prepare a Purchase and Sale Agreement with Habitat at the May 12 meeting, the Board will vote to approve that agreement for $10.5 million. Habitat will put up $100,000 in earnest money within five days, with two more $200,000 deposits to follow, all refundable if zoning doesn't come through.
Second, the Board will conduct a non-binding Preliminary Review of what Habitat actually wants to build: a five-story, 320-unit luxury apartment building wrapping a parking structure, 8,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial space, and resort-style amenities including a pool, fitness center, co-working lounges, and private courtyards. There would be 650 parking spaces total — 500 in the garage, 150 surface.
Those 320 units would be comprised of 191 one-bedroom, 111 two-bedroom, and 15 three-bedroom (yes, the math only adds up to 317). Forty-eight units (15%) would be designated affordable under the State Affordable Housing Special Assessment program at 60% AMI — a deviation from Northbrook's three-tier rental ordinance, which spreads affordable units across a wider range of income levels. Staff flagged it but endorsed it.
Many will recall that it sat largely unused until COVID, when it served as a vaccination clinic and staff operations site. The Village listed it for sale in 2022 and entered into a purchase and sale agreement with Lennar at $10.5 million for 335 luxury apartments.
Through the zoning review process, the project was scaled back, with both density and height reduced. Then, six days before the January 24, 2023 Board meeting, a First Amendment was executed reducing the purchase price to $9.25 million and the unit count to 318.
The Plan Commission had voted the project down unanimously in November 2022. When it went before the Village Board, 30 residents spoke publicly, 22 in opposition, with a petition carrying 1,000 signatures against it. The Board approved it unanimously at 12:50 a.m.
The Village then held on for two and a half years as Lennar failed to perform, and ultimately terminated the deal at a January 2025 Board meeting. At that same meeting, 1.5 acres of the property was donated to a nonprofit affordable housing developer — a 48-unit supportive housing project opening this summer.
Downtown TIF
A third downtown item on Tuesday's agenda is a resolution related to a potential Downtown Tax Increment Financing district, or TIF. The Board will be asked to authorize the preparation of the formal study and report required under Illinois law so the Village can determine whether a downtown TIF is eligible and worth considering. The study would cost up to $27,500, using funds already available in the FY27 budget.
In plain English, a TIF lets the Village capture future growth in property tax revenue from a defined area and reinvest that growth back into the same area. The current taxable value is frozen as the base. If redevelopment increases property values, the added value above that frozen base becomes the "increment." That increment can be used for eligible costs inside the district. Those costs can include public improvements such as sidewalks, roads, utilities, stormwater, parking, environmental cleanup, public spaces, and certain redevelopment incentives.
The best argument for a downtown TIF is that it could make Northbrook more attractive not just to Pulte and Habitat, but to future developers and businesses. The first beneficiaries may be residential projects, but that cannot be the endgame. The real goal would be using new housing to strengthen the downtown customer base, then using the TIF to help attract the commercial investment residents say they want.
The downside is that future property tax growth inside the district is redirected for years into a special fund instead of flowing normally to schools and other taxing bodies. Those taxing bodies continue receiving revenue from the existing base value, and the increment returns to the tax rolls when the TIF expires. But if redevelopment adds students before schools receive the benefit of the expanded tax base, that creates a legitimate near-term funding concern.
**Note - a reader pointed out that the TIFs for Northbrook Court and 770 protected the schools, so it is possible to do so**
Whether a downtown TIF ultimately makes sense will depend entirely on the details: what area is included, what improvements would be funded, how schools would be protected if enrollment increases, how the TIF would support commercial development rather than just residential construction, and how success would be measured.
The Strategic Plan
Tuesday night, the Board will also vote to formally adopt Northbrook's first-ever five-year Strategic Plan.
The plan was developed with BerryDunn, the consulting firm hired by the Village, and is built around five priorities: Connected Community, Public and Community Safety, Economic Vitality, Infrastructure, and Organizational Excellence. The process drew from community forums, interviews, written responses, the Social Pinpoint survey and discussion board, demographic and economic data, and Board and staff development sessions. The Village promoted participation through social media, its website, e-blasts to more than 13,000 newsletter subscribers, and more than 18,000 print newsletters.
Among the things residents said they want were more downtown vitality, better retail and restaurant options, a stronger tax base, better communication, and more visible economic development. Some may argue that the results came from a small subset of residents — fewer than 1,000 people in a Village of more than 30,000. Fair enough. But the Village asked, promoted the process broadly, and gave residents multiple ways to participate. The people who sat it out do not get to erase the input from the people who showed up.
I will save my critiques of this plan for a separate post, except to say that it fails to clearly name the financial threat underneath all of this — roughly $194 million in combined unfunded pension obligations and long-overdue capital projects — and a strategic plan that does not clearly confront that reality is incomplete.
The timing of this particular vote is almost too perfect. On the same night the Board will be asked to adopt a plan built around economic vitality, infrastructure, communication, and execution, it will also hear two major downtown redevelopment proposals (both will likely face vocal opposition) and consider studying a downtown TIF.
My Take
Northbrook needs more revenue, and residents say they want more restaurants, shops, and downtown activity. But businesses do not come because residents say they want them. They come when the economics work.
We have some wonderful businesses downtown. More will come if Northbrook demonstrates that it has the customer base to support them. Compared with Glenview, Highland Park, Winnetka, and Deerfield, Northbrook has by far the fewest people living within one mile of downtown. All else equal, new businesses will choose those locations over ours.
If we want more businesses to choose Northbrook, we need more people near downtown. More people require more housing. More housing, in a built-out suburb, means more density. These two developments will not solve everything, but they would help strengthen the business case for downtown and could spur additional redevelopment. That starts to address what residents say they want while easing pressure on future tax bills.
Given the scale of what Northbrook is trying to do downtown, studying a TIF with already-budgeted money is the right call — provided the goal is making commercial investment viable, not simply making residential projects easier to build. As I said above, the devil will be in the details and we can tackle that when the study is presented.
There is every reason to expect both proposed developments to face serious opposition again. Some beloved businesses will be displaced, and increased density is not cost-free. Traffic that already frustrates residents will likely get worse, construction will be disruptive, schools may feel added pressure, and Northbrook will feel less like the bucolic suburb some residents remember.
Those are the costs of getting what we say we want.
I do not envy the path ahead for the Village Board. But they know they have done a poor job connecting with residents, and they seem either incapable of changing that dynamic or unwilling to try.
The job itself is not mysterious. They need to explain, plainly and repeatedly, that opposing density means favoring much higher property taxes.
That case can be made without spin. Host community forums. Personally invite the loudest detractors. Listen calmly. Then show the progression: what happens if Northbrook adds meaningful downtown density, what happens if it does not, and what each path means for revenue, taxes, traffic, schools, infrastructure, local businesses, and quality of life.
They should also be honest about the proper role of Village government in a free-market economy. The Village should not be in the business of picking winners. It should be creating the conditions that make Northbrook a more attractive place for businesses to invest — and to stay.
Then invite better solutions and actually be open to hearing them. If residents have a serious alternative to density that produces more revenue, more downtown activity, and less pressure on property taxes, put it on the table.
Recent history does not give me much confidence they will approach this that way.
So I am left to hope that residents get engaged, come to or watch Tuesday's meeting, and do so with a strong disposition to learn and understand. The time for conclusions and attempts to influence outcomes will come with the public hearings and later meetings. For now, we should be trying to get as smart as we can about the reality of what is happening.
How to Follow Along
In person
Tuesday, May 26 — 7:30 p.m. Sandra "Sandy" Frum Board Room Village Hall, 1225 Cedar Lane, Northbrook
Fill out a speaker form in the back of the room and submit it to the Village Clerk. Three minutes per speaker. For agenda items, you speak when that item is called.
Online
The meeting streams live on the Village's Facebook page, the Village website, and NCTV Cable Channel 17.
The agenda — which includes links to the full staff memos, development plans, and supporting documents for each item — is posted here.
Further reading on density and commercial viability:
- Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities;
- Edward Glaeser, Triumph of the City;
- Chuck Marohn, Strong Towns.