While Tinley Park has a tentative deal to pay $4.5 million for the former Tinley Park Mental Health Center and adjacent Howe Developmental Center, the path to closing the deal has become trickier, Mayor Mike Glotz said.

Any sale will require approval by the Illinois General Assembly, and there’s finger-pointing regarding which legislator was supposed to introduce legislation to bring the sale to fruition.

The village and the state’s Department of Central Management Services, which controls the site, have a tentative sale agreement, said Glotz and Village Manager Pat Carr.

The village is seeking too redevelop the 280-acre property northwest of the intersection of Harlem Avenue and 183rd Street.

In an email sent Tuesday from his village account, Glotz wrote he had “bad news” about the sale, and blamed state Sen. Mike Hastings, D-Frankfort, for failing to introduce the needed legislation.

“The Village and CMS have partnered and worked well together to put this deal together,” Glotz wrote. “It appears to be bricked and on the brink of failure with the political ping-pong that we feared.”

Glotz and Hastings do not, putting it mildly, see eye to eye, particularly when it comes to the state-owned property.

The mayor blames Hastings for not delivering on a promise to have $15 million earmarked in the state’s Rebuild Illinois capital program to demolish buildings and remove contaminants from the property. The money instead went for capital improvements in Blue Island, Daily Southtown columnist Ted Slowik reported last August.

Who’s on first?

Regarding the proposed sale deal between Tinley Park and the state, Hastings said state Rep. Tim Ozinga, R-Mokena, was to have

introduced legislation.

He said he was told by Glotz that “Ozinga was going to do it.”

“Mr. Ozinga was going to go first” as far as introducing a bill, Hastings said.

Hastings said Glotz’s “emails are factually inaccurate and may border on electioneering.”

Glotz said Wednesday there was no agreement under which Ozinga would take the lead in submitting legislation, and that it was Hastings who promised to sponsor the measure.

“It’s not even Ozinga’s district,” the mayor said.

Last May, Ozinga introduced a bill that would force the sale or transfer of the property to the village.

“We worked with stakeholders and the governor’s team on it but just couldn’t get it across,” Tim Pawula, Ozinga’s chief of staff, said Thursday.

The bill was reintroduced in January, but it was not specifically tied to the recent discussions Tinley Park and the state were having regarding a potential sale, Pawula said.

He said there was no such arrangement under which Ozinga would take the lead in filing legislation specific to the new agreement.

Reintroducing the bill that failed to gain ground last year is an “insurance policy,” Pawula said.

“Let’s get it in and at least have something on file,” he said.

He said Ozinga’s office has not communicated with Hastings regarding the state property.

Glotz said the legislation issue doesn’t mean the deal can’t be consummated.

“It just makes the path a little more difficult,” he said. “There is an opportunity to get there, it just makes the path longer.”

From houses to horses

In buying the site, Tinley Park would take on a multimillion-dollar bill to make the site ready for development.

The village has cited environmental problems such as tainted soil, underground storage tanks, asbestos and black mold. There would also be costs to demolish dozens of buildings.

An estimate made several years ago put the cost at remediating the site’s environmental issues and razing dozens of buildings at $12.4 million, but village officials suspect that cost has increased.

The site is in a tax increment financing district, and property tax revenue generated in the district through redevelopment could be used to pay for those site preparation costs.

“The value of the land after we clean it up is well over $30 million,” Glotz said.

In looking at possible reuses of the site, the village had, several years ago, hired a consultant and conducted public forums.

One proposal from a developer called for more than 400 single-family homes described as active adult, age-restricted housing targeting buyers 55 and older, as well as a 200-unit luxury senior apartment building.

Village officials have said they don’t see housing as the ideal use of the property, preferring entertainment options that could generate substantial property and sales tax revenue.

The site is near the interchange of Harlem with Interstate 80, and near the village’s outdoor music theater, the Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, as well as the village’s convention center and several hotels.

The 2019 expansion of gambling in Illinois allowed for a combination casino and harness racing track in the south suburbs, separate from a license for a land-based casino that state gaming regulators are considering. A racino had been proposed for part of the state property and the village still considers that a potential use.

If the village is able to acquire and redevelop the property, a portion of the site on the west, near the 80th Avenue Metra station, could be used for transit-oriented development, mixing housing and commercial uses, Glotz said.

Tinley Park has long sought to gain control over the property, which officials and residents have said has been a long-standing eyesore and which the village sees as a tax revenue generator.

In 2015, Tinley Park planned to pay the state what was then an asking price of $4.16 million for the property, but backed away from the purchase.

In May 2019, before the racino project surfaced, the state offered to sell it to the village for $4.5 million, and the village indicated it was agreeable, but then talks stalled. Discussions with Central Management Services resumed late last fall.

mnolan@tribpub.com