Highland Park city Council voted unanimously last week to deny an application to open offices in the former highland Park movie theater, opting instead to keep an ordinance intact that seeks to put a restaurant or retail businesses in the long-vacant downtown space.
The City Council approved an ordinance in 2018 granting a special-use permit to property owner Alabama Associates to develop the two-story, approximately 21,600 square-foot commercial building – once owned by the City – with a restaurant and or retail spaces on the ground floor.
The council enacted the ordinance after hearing from nearby-business owners concerned that downtown Highland Park would lose some of its “vibrancy” if the former movie theater became office space, Councilmember Tony Blumberg said during the Aug. 11 City Council meeting.
But Alabama Associates recently filed an application to amend the seven-year-old ordinance and lease two of the three ground floor units for a “high end dermatologist practise with incidental retail sales” and an office of a “private equity fund run by a long-time resident” and friend of Scott Canel, the building’s developer, public records show.
Addressing the Highland Park Plan and Design Commission on June 17, Canel said he wanted to put a dermatologist’s office, another office and a restaurant that helps developmentally disabled individuals through the nonprofit Lindsey’s Place in the ground floor of the building.
“The second floor of the building is my family offices, so it is indeed kind of my home, and it’s been frustrating not to be able to lease the ground floors,” Canel told the commission. “We’ve had three different brokerage firms work for us over the years trying to find retail or restaurants.”
The city Plan and Design Commission voted 6-0 to allow Canel relief from the 2018 ordinance.
But members of City Council expressed dismay that the ground floor of the building has remained empty for so many years. Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering said it was “very frustrating” that Alabama Associates had not returned phone calls from city staff.