Business View Magazine
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out that Arlington Heights has recently experienced a
sizable boom in its economic development. “We’re a
130 year-old community,” he declares, “but I like to
consider ourselves as a leader and real model com-
munity in terms of being progressive in our economic
development.”
Charles Perkins is Arlington Heights’ Director of Plan-
ning and Community Development. He talks about
some of the Village’s recent, downtown redevelop-
ment projects: “Several very large mixed-use devel-
opments in the hundreds of millions of dollars that
were built and completed about ten years ago, have
enabled us to set the downtown as an entertainment
destination area for the northwest suburbs,” he says.
“We have a live performing arts theater; a movie the-
ater; and about 40 restaurants that give a lot of vi-
brancy in the evening and on the weekends.”
Other ongoing, redevelopment projects include: a
mixed-use, eight-story building with 45 apartments
and commercial retail; the construction of a new
headquarters for HSBC, the world’s third largest bank,
which is moving its North American facilities and some
1,500 employees to the Village; and Arlington Downs,
a 35-acre development near the famed Arlington Park
Race Track. According to Perkins, the $250 million
project “includes the renovation of a shuttered hotel
that closed during the peak of the Recession. The de-
velopers received permits for a new hotel and an ex-
pansion of the existing water park that was there. And
they’ll build about another 100,000 square feet of re-
tail space around a village green concept, and maybe
up to another 400 plus apartments.”
When private interests invest in Arlington Heights, Per-
kins says that the Village works with them by amending
any necessary zoning, density, and/or other land use
AT A GLANCE
WHO:
Arlington Heights, Illinois
WHAT:
A suburban city of 46,000
WHERE:
Northwest of Chicago
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