WHAT WOULD NORTHBROOK DO ?

This is fair question since they just had their own major development going on at Willow Festival. This is located on Willow Road and includes Whole Foods, Lowe’s, Best Buy and a planned hotel. They have left the development to the market – no TIF – no developer incentives – no land purchases.

The following is an excerpt from the village's TIF Retirement plan, what stands out is the willingness of the village to subsidize developers and private interests when it is probably not even needed. We say this because Northbrook has just seen a massive development at Willow Festival and they did not need a TIF or interest free "loans" to developers or incentives to get tenants into commercial office space. 

 " Developer Incentives To date, four cash incentives have been approved from the TIF district to enhance development within The Glen. They include:  􀂾 $76.5 million to OliverMcMillan for infrastructure and building improvements at The Glen Town Center including the public parking decks, parks, sidewalks, and streets ($76.5 million has been paid in full); this incentive was offset by a land sale price of $38,627,000 which consisted of $21,627,000 cash at closing and two revenue-sharing agreements in the amounts of $12 million with OM and $5 million with Von Maur  􀂾 $2 million to Anixter for their corporate headquarters relocation ($950,000 has been paid through 2006)  􀂾 $637,500 to Beltone for their corporate headquarters relocation ($153,750 has been paid through 2006)  􀂾 $2.2 million to M. E. Fields to mitigate soil conditions and provide stormwater detention for a Jeep/Dodge/Chrysler automotive dealership (payments have not commenced)  Additionally, a $1.4 million loan was made to Thomas Place to assist in providing an affordable senior housing complex. Also, an additional contribution to OliverMcMillan in the amount of $750,000 was made in 2005, which must be repaid not later than August 16, 2008. Finally, it is possible that additional incentives will be necessary to attract high density corporate headquarters tenants to the Prairie Glen Corporate Campus. "    

We will get into the Von Maur deal in separate post for now let's just focus on the commercial real estate incentives. We gave Anixter $ 2 million and  Beltone $ 637.5m. We are now considering further incentives for the new building being erected at the southeast corner of Willow and Patriot. Who benefits from these incentives the most ? The answer is the developer in this case Catellus which was acquired by a company named Prologis. In their latest financial report Prologis announced for the 9 months of 2007 they had earning before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) of $ 1.5 billion with $34.4 billion in assets owned. Why in the world is Glenview giving subsidies to the tenants these guys are bringing into their buildings ?