Also in 2003, Skokie completed the Skokie Swift Station Location Feasibility Study, which looked at adding intermediate stations on the CTA Yellow Line, also called the Skokie Swift, and extending the line to Old Orchard Road. The Yellow Line is the last remnant of the Skokie Valley Line of the Chicago, North Shore & Milwaukee, an electric interurban railroad built in 1925 that at one time connected North Chicago in Lake County to Evanston via Skokie and had six Skokie stations. Now the Yellow Line is an express train that makes a five-mile one-way trip between Dempster Street in Skokie and Howard Street in Chicago in eight minutes. Trains run weekdays every seven to fifteen minutes. The study found that both a new intermediate stop at Oakton Street and Skokie Boulevard, adjacent to the Parkway Campus, and the extension to Old Orchard Road were feasible. Village staff began working on securing funding for Oakton Station.

A Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) grant was awarded under the 2005 Program for $448,000, which is 80% of the estimated final engineering and design for the new Oakton Station. The Village is matching an additional $112,000 for this phase of the project. The Village was awarded $9,195,700 of 2006 CMAQ money for 80% of the construction of the station. The balance, $2,299,000 is being funded by the Village of Skokie. A TIF district was created to fund the new station and associated improvements.

In March 2005, Cleveland-based Forest City Enterprises, developers of University Park at MIT and other high-profile projects such as Central Station in the South Loop, Chicago, residential redevelopment at Great Lakes Naval Training Center in North Chicago, IL, the Stapleton in Denver, CO, The New East Baltimore Community in Baltimore, MD, and Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn, NY, purchased the G. D. Searle Parkway Campus in Downtown Skokie and began working towards developing the property into the Illinois Science + Technology Park (IS+TP). It demolished a majority of the site’s buildings, retaining one state-of-the-art wet-lab research facility and three other buildings that had newer or versatile office and research space.

Village staff spent over a year working with Forest City to develop a multiphase master plan, design guidelines, and a new zoning district. Forest City wanted flexibility in use and building form, a development that was interconnected and integrated into Downtown Skokie, and direct rapid transit access for urban tech employees and support staff. The Village wanted to foster the bioscience and technology uses promised by Forest City while not subsidizing competition to other office projects in the area or Downtown Skokie retail and restaurant business and increase publicly accessible open spaces.

 

The Final Plan removes 4901 Searle and replaces in with 2 taller buildings, additional street connections, and an expanded Central Quadrangle.

In January 2007, the Village Board approved a new zoning district and master plan. The zoning requires Appearance Commission-approved design guidelines that assure buildings, circulation, and open spaces facilitate pedestrian movement within the district, between the district and surrounding districts, and to and from transit facilities. All bulk requirements are determined by the Plan Commission, subject to a few design rules, but buildings must be at least 40 feet tall and no more than 180 feet tall. The Plan Commission also establishes three-dimensional building envelops in which each building must be contained. As long as any future building remains within that envelop and the Appearance Commission rules that it conforms to the design guidelines, the Plan Commission does not have to hear the case. At least 25% of the land must be for general public use in plaza, quadrangles, and pedestrian paths. An across-the-board 15% parking reduction is applied to all uses due to the adjacent train station. Retail uses must be accessible by the public and are limited to 20% of the ground floor of each building to force IS+TP employees off-site for most goods and services while allowing non-IS+TP employees to come onto the site.

In July 2007, there was about 30% occupancy of the 670,000 square feet of space currently available at IS+TP and is already home to approximately 750 employees. Tenants include Evanston Northwestern Healthcare’s, Astellas Research Instute of America and Astellas Pharma US (divisions of Japan’s second largest pharmaceutical company), MidWest Bio Research, NanoBusiness Alliance, NanoInk, Nanotope, Polyera, and Thermo Fisher. Forest City reported being close to several other lease agreements. The IS+TP is projected to have up to 2 million square feet of office and laboratory space for a total project cost of about $300 million with 3,000-6,000 on-site jobs. Analysts project that the IS+TP will generate $1.8 billion annually in statewide economic activity, with park employees spending $2 million annually in Downtown Skokie … just at lunchtime. Forest City will be contributing over $5M to $6M in public improvements.

By prohibiting residential in the research and technology district and increasing the density of the surrounding residential areas, the TOD associated with Oakton Station has proven to be a successful mechanism for job growth in Downtown Skokie. Final design for Oakton Station continues with construction to begin in 2008. The first public meeting about the station design will be July 26, 2007. After four years of planning, Skokie’s final draft of its Comprehensive Plan update for downtown Skokie, which integrates Oakton Station, the IS+TP master plan, a consultant report, and input from various ad hoc groups, is in the public comment stage and scheduled to be heard before the Plan Commission on August 2, 2007. The draft plan can be viewed online at http://www.skokie.org/comm/compplan.html. More information about the IS+TP can be found at http://www.scienceparkillinois.net/. For any other information, contact Steve Marciani, Skokie Planning Supervisor, 847-933-8447 or steve.marciani@skokie.org.