A new car repair shop will move into a vacant building that once housed a Jiffy Lube after the Homewood village board approved a special use permit at its Oct. 9 meeting.
Allied Advantage Group Transmissions and Repair will move into the location at 3349 183rd Street. The business will be a full-service auto repair shop, offering tire repairs and replacements, oil changes, transmission replacements, tune ups and alignments, according to village documents.
The Jiffy Lube opened in 1987 and closed in November 2017.
The new shop will be open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays and 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturdays. It will be closed on Sundays. Allied will have two employees working and four service bays.
Homewood’s Planning and Zoning Commission unanimously recommended approval of the special use permit. It was necessary because the building is located in the village’s B-3 service business zone, in which automotive repair businesses are considered special use.
The board also approved a $179,880 contract with Civic Systems of Madison, Wisconsin, for new financial software.
Homewood last updated its MSI financial software in 2004, Director of Finance Dennis Bubenik said. MSI sold out to Harris Systems in 2005, after which Bubenik said yearly maintenance fees went up and customer service dropped in quality.
Bubenik told trustees the Finance Department has been working on a replacement system the past two years, and used Baecore Group of Schaumburg as its consultant. The Baecore Group interviewed staff to determine how the software is used, and drew up a request for proposal for new software earlier this year.
Bubenik also had an in-house team that reviewed the proposals and interviewed finalists. Civic Systems was selected, in part, because it offered cloud storage, it agreed to a payment plan for the $179,880 purchase and it offers long-term software updates with no additional charge.
The board also approved the purchase of six Motorola APX 6000 radios and accessories from Miner Electronics of Munster, Indiana, for $33,854.70. The radios will be used by the police department.
