Arlington Downs luxury apartments to start leasing next week
Daily Herald | Melissa Silverberg | April 23, 2014
Future residents can begin leasing apartments at Arlington Downs as early as next week, officials announced on Wednesday morning along with giving more details about the massive redevelopment project.
Arlington Heights business leaders and politicians heard new details about the multimillion dollar project on the former Sheraton hotel site, at a breakfast meeting hosted by the Arlington Economic Alliance at Metropolis Ballroom.
The 27-acre project will have more than 100,000 square feet of retail space, mostly occupied by restaurants, plus 650 residential units, 160 hotel rooms and an expanded water park, said David Trandel, CEO of Stonestreet Partners, developer on the Arlington Downs project.
The first part of the project to be completed will be the transformation of the former Sheraton hotel into a tower of 214 luxury apartments, which Trandel said will begin leasing May 2, the same day Arlington Park opens its 2014 season.
The tower will have an “amenity floor,” a floor without residences, that will have a demo kitchen, a viewing room, a yoga/Pilates room, an 1,800-square-foot fitness center and a 5,000-square-foot outdoor deck overlooking the track with grills, fire pits and telescopes.
“It will be a real oasis for our residents,” said Rick Cavenaugh, president of Stoneleigh Companies, the private real estate firm developing the apartments. “We are creating something of an urban campus in Arlington Heights.”
The building will have storage units for every apartment, a dog grooming facility, music recording studio, a bike storage and maintenance facility and commercial laundry facilities.
Almost every unit will have a balcony, while some of the penthouse-level apartments will have multiple balconies or a larger sized terrace overlooking the area.
Each unit will have a washer-dryer and every resident will be guaranteed parking in a garage or on the property.
Developers said the goal is to have the building open by July and completely finished by October.
Exact rents and fees are still being worked out, but developers said most leases will be for 12-month periods and pricing will be around $1,300-$1,500 a month for studios, $2,000 a month for one-bedroom apartments and $3,000 a month for two bedroom apartments.
Trandel said he hopes to get construction started on the next phase of the project — a new Four Points by Sheraton Hotel with 161 rooms and an expanded water park — in June.
Developers have a deal with Wilderness Resorts, which owns resorts and water parks at Wisconsin Dells, to renovate the water park, which will include an additional 10,000 square feet of space, two more rides and a redesign to gear the park more toward a teenage crowd, Trandel said.
Construction on the water park could take five to seven months and construction on the hotel is about a 10-month project, Trandel said.
Later phases of the project will include more retail, restaurants and a second luxury apartment tower.
“We saw this as an opportunity to have a real entertainment destination,” Trandel said.
Developers said they are also working with officials from the Salt Creek Park District, which owns 13 acres behind the property, to use that space for water retention.
The $250 million redevelopment project is one of the largest projects in the Chicago area, officials said.
“This is going to become a very exciting, dynamic new cornerstone for the village,” Cavenaugh said.