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By Jeff Vorva
Crossroads did not hit a roadblock.
Despite not wanting to bring more apartments to the village, the Orland Park Village Board approved plans for the Crossroads of Orland Park at its May 6 Committee of the whole and regular meetings and it will indeed feature 132 apartments.
The Crossroads project, located on LaGrange Road, 159th Street and 94th Street, is expected to have three five-story buildings with 44 units per building along with three restaurants and a hotel on a 16-acre area.
The board voted 5-0 for the plans with trustees Brian Riordan and Sean Kampas absent.
The board hashed out the apartment issue during its discussion before the vote.
“Our direction and goals are to be homeowner-occupied and here we are talking about apartments and that raises a concern to me because they are five-story buildings,” Trustee Michael Milani said. “They are nice looking buildings, don’t get me wrong, but do we want five-story buildings?
“If there is a way we can rectify that…but I doubt that’s in our cards here.”
Trustees wanted clarification that his project would not be another project similar to 9750 apartments that the current board feels is a financial disaster.
“You’ve heard me say it a bazillion times — we’re not a big fan of apartments,” Mayor Keith Pekau said. “We get requests, and we turn them away. We don’t ever pass the word ‘go,’ because we say ‘no’ all the time.
“I mean, if we wanted to fill up Orland Park with apartments, we could have done so already.”
But he is reluctantly willing to let it happen because of the logistics of the property.
“This is a tough site and is there anybody here that would ever buy a single-family home in there?” Pekau said. “No, you would not be able to do that.
“It’s kind of one of those places as we’ve talked about. At least in my opinion, there’s a few places that you can do apartments in in town that they actually make sense because nothing else has ever really going to go there.”
Carrie Haberstich, the village’s assistant director of development, said that aside from the apartments, there will be a 107-room hotel, three restaurants – two with drive throughs, a dog park, a walking path, a scenic overlook and native vegetation restoration.
