Why is Downtown Lisle Frozen in Time?

The Family Square Shopping Center at the SE corner of Ogden and Main has been a vacant eyesore for over 8 years. In 2017 Mayor Joe Broda had an agreed upon deal with developer Flaherty and Collins to build a $50M+ mixed use development with over 100 public parking spaces on the Family Square site. When Chris Pecak won the mayoral election that year, his team stopped the deal in Planning and Zoning by redrafting zoning regulations and making the developer jump through hoops until they became discouraged by the process and walked away.

Despite similar mixed-use developments being built in every other surrounding downtown community, the new mayor’s team did not support residential use in the downtown business district and wanted retail only developments. There were already a number of retail vacancies and small business closures in downtown Lisle and creating more retail space was not/is not attractive to developers who cannot recover their investment based on low retail rental rates and few pedestrian shoppers.

After a two-year “quite period”, as a member of the Lisle Economic Development Commission (EDC), I personally reached back out to Flaherty and Collins and invited them to return to the table with the assurance the EDC would support appropriate development and help shepherd the project through the local bureaucracy. As a result, Flaherty and Collins made a significant financial investment, putting a formal proposal together and hosting a series of public community input sessions. Concurrently, Mayor Pecak withdrew Village funding for the Lisle Convention and Visitors Bureau (LCVB) and disbanded the EDC. In turn, he appropriated the LCVB designated tax revenues to create the Lisle Economic Development Partnership (LEDP), that was to be a public and private partnership.

The LEDP board was made up of volunteer business leaders from the community, an executive director, the mayor and one Village trustee appointed by the mayor. When the LEDP’s executive director and board of directors came out in strong support of the Flaherty and Collins proposal Mayor Pecak and the other trustee board member disrupted the LEDP meetings and had a member of his political group (and a former chair of Planning and Zoning) file a bogus lawsuit against the Village over alleged Freedom of Information Act violations by the LEDP (which the LEDP was not subject to). These antics completely halted the LEDP’s mission and stalled the Family Square deal even longer. After spending $40K in legal fees, the Village then entered into a $23K settlement with Mayor Pecak’s political ally in a very questionable backroom deal.

Subsequently, in November of 2021, the volunteer LEDP board terminated the executive director’s position, and seven members resigned in a mass protest to Mayor Pecak’s actions. Mayor Pecak then replaced the board with members of his own choosing. In 2023, the Village trustees voted to sever ties with the LEDP, now run by the mayor, for violating their funding agreement with the Village. Currently, the Mayor’s LEDP continues to deplete the remaining taxpayer funds with no accountability to the Village. The whole failed LEDP venture has cost Lisle taxpayers more than half a million dollars and amounted to nothing more than political theater with no measurable economic development as their name would imply.

As this very public drama played out, inflation ballooned construction costs by around 30% and interest rates tripled. Remarkably, Flaherty and Collins stayed the course and continued to try to find creative ways to make the deal work. Simultaneously, Mayor Pecak vetoed key proposed actions related to Family Square. The retail market was also in post-pandemic freefall with increasingly vacant retail space in Downtown Lisle. This made the 24,000 square feet of retail space the Village required in the Flaherty and Collins deal a very hard sell to investors. All of these factors, combined with many years of hostile attacks and the spreading of misinformation against the developer, put the deal underwater. Flaherty and Collins pitched hundreds of potential investors and not a single financial partner was willing to invest in the Lisle project. It was now over 7 years in the making, with over a million dollars invested, and Flaherty and Collins was forced to walk away for a second time…this time for good.

If not for all the political gaming, the Family Square gateway property to our downtown would have been developed and occupied years ago and Main St. would be a much more vibrant and viable destination for our existing and future small businesses. As it stands, the past eight years have served to greatly alienate the real estate investment community and it may be years to come before developers see Lisle as a welcoming and sound investment. Only time will tell, but future leaders of our town now face even greater economic challenges, and we desperately need to put out an olive branch to rebuild relationships with the business community or Downtown Lisle will remain frozen in time…or worse.