Hilco Redevelopment Partners scored a nearly $20 million tax break for its massive $100 million industrial complex in Little Village.
The City Council Wednesday voted to reduce property tax assessments for 12 years on the firm’s planned 1 million-square-foot “Exchange 55” project on Pulaski Road near the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, according to Block Club. The incentive will save the firm $19.7 million.
The city last year approved Hilco’s plans for the 70-acre site of the shuttered coal-fired Crawford Power Plant, but the Northbrook-based company’s request for the tax break ran into resistance from members of the community who weren’t happy with the project in the first place. Opponents complain the facility will add to congestion and diesel pollution in the area.
Hilco in 2017 bought the power plant property, which was shut down in 2012 after years of pressure from environmentalists. Hilco also is buying the former Fisk Generating Station in Pilsen, also shut down in 2012, with plans to turn that property into a massive data center.
Hilco expects the Little Village project will take two years to complete. When finished it will join a number of new projects on the Southwest Side of the city and in the greater Interstate 55 industrial corridor, one of the hottest submarkets in the booming Chicago industrial scene. [Block Club] — John O’Brien