West Dundee planning to buy second Spring Hill anchor store to increase its stake in mall’s future

Two weeks after agreeing to buy the vacant Macy’s anchor store in the Spring Hill Mall, the West Dundee Village Board is poised to add a second mall anchor store to its real estate portfolio.

West Dundee Village Board trustees will vote Monday on the purchase of the empty Sears store and 14 acres of Spring Hill property for $2 million from Hoffman Estates-based Transformco, Village President Chris Nelson said.

As with the $1.25 million Macy’s deal, the Sears deal would close sometime in June if approved.

The village has interest in seeing the mostly empty Spring Hill Mall revamped into a multiuse development, he said. Malls have fallen out of favor as the retail shopping scene has changed, Nelson said.

“While the market remains strong, the (mall) template doesn’t work anymore,” Nelson said.

By owning the two large segments of the mall at Western Avenue/Route 72 and Main Street, village officials become a major stakeholder in any future redevelopment plans, he said.

The village has no plans to seek tenants for the two empty stores, both of which closed in 2020.

Mall-based retail markets were thriving when Spring Hill opened in 1980, becoming magnets for people who liked spending time inside a climate-controlled location where they could meet friends, shop, dine and go to the movies.

Sears was one of the original anchor stores as was Marshall Field & Co., which was sold in 2006 to Macy’s, which took over the anchor store location.

What makes Spring Hill interesting is about 75% of it is in West Dundee, including the Cinemark movie theaters, and the rest in Carpentersville, including a now-vacant Carson’s anchor store, which closed in 2018. Kohl’s, the only remaining anchor, is Carpentersville and owns its own store.

The rest of the mall is owned by the Kohan Real Estate Group of Great Neck, New York.

Nelson said it’s unrealistic to expect Kohan, which bought the mall two years ago, to invest any more money into it but officials have not told the village what they plan to do with the building.

“We need to intervene. We are acutely interested in talking with them about what the next steps might be,” he said.

For the village, those steps most likely would include demolition of the former Sears and Macy’s stores but they can’t set any sort of timetable without more discussion with Kohan, Nelson said.

Carpentersville Village President John Skillman, who was aware of the pending Sears store sale, said “we wish West Dundee well.”

The village has no plans to do anything similar with the Carson’s store, he said.

Like West Dundee, Carpentersville officials have not heard anything from Kohan about plans for the mall, Village Manager John O’Sullivan said. At this point, they’re taking a wait-and-see approach, he said.

While there have been social media posts about some of Elgin Mall Corp. vendors breaking off from the move to East Dundee and leasing the former Carson’s store, O’Sullivan said he has no verification of that. No one has applied for a business license or construction permits.

“As of (Thursday), we haven’t heard anything,” O’Sullivan said.

The one big problem for anyone who might lease the Carson’s store is the elevators do not work and would need to make repairs, he said.

Nelson said he finds it surprising that anyone would be interested in opening in the mall.

“That doesn’t make a lot of sense. The cross-shopping synergy is nonexistent,” he said.

While the mall has seen better days, there are signs of burgeoning economic growth near it.

The Assembly restaurant recently opened in what had been a shuttered Chili’s on Western Avenue/Route 72 in Carpentersville, and a May 30 groundbreaking is planned for the 130-unit Iron Flat luxury apartment complex at the northwest corner of Route 31 and Huntley Road, also in Carpentersville.

Mike Danahey is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.