St. Charles backs off Frontier-Reschke, Murphy proposals for ex-police station

A western Chicago suburb’s officials may move the goalpost on some of the city’s biggest developers, including Mike Reschke and John Murphy.

After inviting bids to redevelop the former police station in downtown St. Charles and advancing competing proposals involving Reschke and Murphy, the suburb’s leaders the city’s leaders voted to return them and restart the process with new guidance, the Shaw Local News Network reported.

The move amounts to a setback for a partnership between Frontier Development and Reschke’s Prime Group, which won the state’s bidding process to reposition the James R. Thompson Center in downtown Chicago and subsequently partnered with Quintin Primo to strike a deal with Google to buy the building and occupy the property in a massive expansion of its local workforce.

The partnership is aiming to build a $150 million, six-story building and parking garage holding 164 hotel rooms, 107 residential units, four restaurants and spa and fitness amenities and conference center, with the developers asking for up to $20 million in tax increment financing and revenue sharing from the city.

Meanwhile, Murphy’s plan is to build five to seven stories to turn the property into 141 apartments, retail and restaurant space at a cost of $60.5 million without incentives from the city.

A majority of city council members at a St. Charles Planning and Development Committee meeting voted to reject all redevelopment proposals for the site with plans to set new ground rules on feasibility and then request more.

Some residents criticized the Frontier-Prime proposal for being too big, in their view, for the riverfront site at 211 North Riverside Avenue, and for its potential to overcrowd the area with the traffic.

Now, the city looks set to conduct a new feasibility study to analyze concerns with traffic flows, utilities and environmental factors before moving either proposal further forward. The full city council will issue a final decision on whether to restart the bidding.

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