Former Illinois Public Safety Building May be Transformed Under Agreement

EDWARDSVILLE, Illinois -- By the end of this year, parts of the former Edwardsville Public Safety Complex at 400 N. Main St. may be just a memory.

The city's finance and administrative and community service (ACS) committees unanimously voted in favor of a resolution authorizing a tax-increment financing (TIF) redevelopment agreement with 400 North Main, LLC, which will breathe new life into a block that has been vacant for years. The current public safety building opened in late 2017.

The site, bounded on the west by North Main Street, on the north by Abner Place and on the south by High Street, is located within the city's TIF 4 district.

400 North Main is led by local developer Matt Pfund and Michael Bailey and his wife, Kristie, of Fireside Financial, which recently completed Whispering Heights on Route 157. This project is slated to cost at least $20 million. Hazardous material removal will begin next week, Pfund said.

Buildings will front the site plan, with all parking stashed behind them, including underground parking. Pfund said currently, High Street has a fairly steep slope and to improve the Americans with Disabilities Act ( ADA) on the south side of the site, where the police station used to be, for the retail on the ground floor with offices above, culminating in a five-story office tower. There's also a restaurant planned for the fourth floor.

Pfund said the small house, the former police department's sally port area, where prisoners were transferred, the front of the former fire station and a tool building in the rear of the site will all be demolished and replaced by a new building while the rest of the police complex will get a new floor added to it. The former fire department driveway will be transformed into a courtyard for outdoor dining area while a second five-story tower, this one residential, will grow on the northwest corner of the development.

There is a single-level parking deck planned along with at-grade parking. It'll be a hybrid parking model as the site will have different users during the day versus at night. In the rear, he plans to fill in and clean up the brush and shrubs from the draininge ditch to flatten and re-sod it with native grasses.

"This has taken us about a year to get to this point," Pfund said. "And it's been a tough site to figure out without wiping everything out."

He said a restaurant has already committed to the site and he is working on marketing the others. He said he would not name the committed restaurant before the city approves the entire project, probably next month.

"The gist of it is, there are two upfront costs that the city has provided — $290,000 over a two-year period for abatement and demolition," City Administrator Kevin Head said. "They'll be tearing down approximately three buildings there along with stormwater management and utility connections for $210,000 or $500,000 total."

He said there is a piece of city-owned property to the east that will be needed for parking. The city will lease it to the 400 group for $1 per year for 99 years, he said. It will also be available for public parking.

There will be an 85/15 TIF rebate. The developer will get 85 percent of the increment for the next seven years since there are only seven years remaining on this 23-year TIF, Head said. Ten percent is a pass-through to all of the taxing bodies and the remaining five percent goes back into the TIF to pay the debt service on the work that has already been done including streetscape, road improvements, sidewalks and utilities.

There's a five-year installment with zero interest to the developer for the tap-on fees for water and sewer at the site. The developer will pay engineering costs and they will go door-to-door for easement access that is needed on High Street. Meanwhile, Edwardsville will pay for reconstructing High Street, for which it has already been planned and budgeted, to make ingress and egress easier.

"This would be, in our opinion, a great asset to that area," Head said.

There will be two variances, parking and building height, that will be dealt with at the next round of committee and city council meetings in late August and early September.

After that, the variances will have to go to the city's zoning board of adjustment on Aug. 22, returning to ACS on Sept. 1 before coming back before city council on Sept. 6. After that, 400 North Main will start releasing more details on the project via the city's communications coordinator, Cathy Hensley.

This development agreement will go before the full city council on Tuesday. Demolition can start within 90 days if the city council approves the development agreement.

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