Dick's Sporting Goods seeks village financial support for Orland Square House of Sports concept store
Dick's Sporting Goods is providing more details about its proposed House of Sports concept store it wants to build in Orland Park, and is telling villlage officials it will need financial help from them to make it work.
The chain has a store in the village and is looking to convert the former Sears anchor space at Orland Square shopping center.
The House of Sports store, which the chain has opened elsewhere around the country, would be at least twice the size of its existing store in the village. It would feature 'experiential' attractions such as a fenced-in outdoor field, indoor climbing wall and batting cages, a Dick's executive told Orland Park officials.
The 200,000-square-foot Sears store, which was an anchor since the mall opened in 1976, closed in spring 2018. Other options, including a multi-screen theater, have been proposed in the past.
'We're really interested in really upping our game here so to speak,' Vincent Corno, senior vice president of real estate for the chain, recently told village trustees.
He called House of Sports the chain's 'latest and greatest prototype,' and said the Pittsburgh-based company now has 22 such stores and expects 35 in total by the end of this year. He said the goal is 75 by the end of 2027.
'We're growing fast,' he told trustees.
Corno didn't say how much the company would need as far as financial support by Orland Park, although the village is studying creating a tax increment financing district that could aid the project.
Corno leads the strategic direction for Dick's real estate and facilities functions across all business lines, including its Golf Galaxy subsidiary. This includes everything from future market development planning to site and lease negotiations, according to the company's website.
A typical Dick's location is about 50,000 square feet while House of Sports stores can typically be about 120,000 square feet. The company looks to convert big, empty mall anchors, and has worked with Simon Property Group, Orland Square's owner, on different House of Sports projects, Corno said.
House of Sports stores not only boost sales compared with Dick's regular stores, based on square footage, but also support in-line stores in a mall and can attract new tenants to a mall, Corno said.
'These are not inexpensive outlays,' Corno said.
He called it a transformational investment and said with purchasing the property and building out the space, a typical House of Sports can cost $40 million or $50 million to complete.
While not a new retail concept, experiential shopping has gripped the industry.
Things such as a 17,000-square-foot fenced-in field that could be used for soccer and baseball in the spring and summer and hockey in the winter would be planned, Corno said.
Inside, a climbing wall and golf driving bays would let customers try out new equipment.
Having a House of Sports benefits other tenants in the mall, and attracts new ones, Corno said. He said their customers patronize other mall stores, and the influx of new revenue ultimately flows to the mall's operator.
'All boats are rising with this type of investment,' Corno said.
He said the wing of Orland Square where Sears was based has seen tenant vacancies rise since the anchor closed.
'Those mall wings suffer when the anchor is dark,' Corno said.
Dick's plans to buy the entire property, including the two-level building which sits on 16 acres, and a vast parking lot.
He said the company is working on whether it wants to use both floors or keep House of Sports on the upper level and lease space on the lower level to other tenants. He said it's possible Dick's could use the loading dock and parking lot space on the lower level of the building's east side for the fenced field.
'We're in the very early stage of figuring out what goes where,' Corno said.
Dick's looked at trying to reconfigure its store in the Orland Park Place shopping center on La Grange Road south of the mall, but that site didn't work, Corno said.
The company also looked at buying land in the village on the south side of 159th Street west of La Grange Road, near Costco, he said. Corno said 'land values were crazy' and that 'we couldn't justify that acquisition.'
He said the company, however, wants to see if there is a commitment from the village to help financially before it moves ahead with the House of Sports project.
Corno said if the village didn't help financially, Dick's would continue to operate it existing store.
He said that should it go ahead with House of Sports, the operator of Orland Park Place would easily be able to fill that space.
Trustees said they were supportive of the company's expansion plans.
'This would be a great addition' to the village, Trustee Michael Milani said. 'It looks like a great concept.'
'Experiential retail is where people are heading,' Milani said.
Trustee Dina Lawrence called the proposal 'a very compelling business plan.'
Orland Park officials are studying the potential creation of a tax increment financing district as an incentive tool for filling the long-vacant Sears store.
Trustees passed a resolution in March to allow TIF funds to be used to redevelop the space, at the southeast corner of the mall. TIF money can be used to pay for public improvements as well as incentives for developers.
Orland Park is also spending up to $30,000 for adviser SB Friedman to study whether the property, including the adjacent large parking lot, qualifies as a TIF.
Factors such as blighted conditions, including declining property values, are considered in determining whether a property or multiple properties qualify as a TIF under Illinois law.
The village has said part of the large parking lot hugging the Sears space would need to be used to provide additional stormwater storage for the mall and surrounding properties. TIF funds could be used to pay for that.
'We are at capacity with what we have' now around the mall perimeter, Village Manager George Koczwara, village said at the committee meeting.
While Simon owns the in-line store space and common areas, mall anchors own what are called their own pads, including parking.
California-based Cubework owns the Sears property, and at one point announced plans to convert the store into a 'co-working mall.'
Corno said that Dick's has a tentative handshake deal with Cubework to buy the site.
Before Cubework's ownership, plans had been proposed for a 10-screen 45,000-square-foot AMC Theatre along with retailers and restaurant tenants on the upper level of the Sears space.
That came before the announcement of the store's closing, and theater plans never came to fruition, partly due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cubework had looked at using the interior space to rent kiosks and pop-up spaces to small businesses, offering short-term leases.
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