Nicor Illinois Community Investment (NICI) has awarded a $100,000 Impact Grant to the Southland Development Authority (SDA) in Tinley Park. The grant is intended to support the launch of the Monarch Fund, which is designed to provide flexible capital for large-scale community projects across south suburban Cook County.
Bo Kemp, CEO of the SDA, explained the significance of the partnership with NICI for the area. “They have funded our efforts to essentially create a $100-million fund that we will invest in real estate projects in the Southland so we can spur private investments on top of that for development in all the different communities,” Kemp said.
“That will allow us to do what we call horizontal development, which means acquiring all pieces of property, getting zoning and permitting, working with individual communities around incentives, if there are incentives, or any other sorts of important issues that are dear to the community,” Kemp said. From those initiatives, SDA “can determine what type of development vertically can be built in these locations. With that information, we will then go and identify people who want to build vertically.”
Kemp said the goal for the Monarch Fund is to spur up to $2 billion in private investments over the next decade, focusing on single-family homes, multifamily homes, commercial and retail areas and industrial sites.
Increasing property taxes are a primary concern for residents in the area, Kemp said. He explained that municipalities can take two primary approaches to diversify tax bases and alleviate the burden of property taxes on individual owners by:
1) Increasing population, typically through multifamily or apartment buildings.
2) Diversifying the tax base by adding more industrial properties.
Kemp said the Monarch Fund will encourage private investment in one or both of those areas by working with communities that are open to these development models.
Kemp acknowledges that resistance to change is a significant challenge as many residents moved to the suburbs seeking a specific environment. However, he stressed that addressing aging infrastructure necessitates these types of strategic investments.
One of the first anticipated investments for the fund is in University Park where the SDA has 260 acres of land under contract. The plan calls for building industrial, retail, commercial and residential properties in partnership with the Village of University Park and Governors State University.
Kemp said they expect this project to substantially increase the population of people living and working in University Park, create density to attract more retail and commercial opportunities and bring industrial tax revenue to the area.
The SDA also is exploring other projects in the region. Kemp said that the SDA is in early-stage conversations with village officials in Homewood and Flossmoor about developments.
In addition to the SDA, NICI awarded $100,000 Impact Grants to four other nonprofits, including Proactive Community Services in Flossmoor, OAI, Inc. in Park Forest and two organizations in Rockford. According to a press release, NICI has invested more than $1.8 million in northern Illinois’ most underserved communities since it was founded by Nicor Gas in 2021.
