Arlington Heights Shopping Center Left Behind: a Gym, Pianos and a Cart of Toys

This is a strip mall on Golf Road in Arlington Heights, and when I got there it had a few tenants left and a lot of boarded windows. Only a few years earlier it had over 20 stores, restaurants and a gym. Online shopping and Amazon wore it down one tenant at a time until only five were left, and the owner decided to sell to a developer who planned to tear it all down for apartments.

I explored it with StringerMedia before the bulldozers started. Local reporting names it International Plaza, and what made the video was how much was still sitting inside the stores that had already closed.

What we found

From the parking lot it looks like a normal plaza with a salon, a pancake house and a few cars out front. Most of it was dead. The signs were still up on the empty units, which is not what I usually see, because the sign is normally the first thing a business takes with it. A lamppost lay on the ground, snapped in half, with what looked like gargoyles or dragons on it.

The acupuncture clinic had a front door with a “welcome walk in” sign, and it was open. Inside there were a few drawers and nothing else. The martial arts studio next door was locked, but through the glass I could see little mannequins. The hair salon still had its mirrors and a desk and someone’s graffiti, and whoever got in had crawled through a window. The dentist’s office had lost its chairs and equipment, and what was left was graffiti and crusted toothpaste.

The antique shop was the one we could not skip. We went in through the back. There were shoes, candle bases, nice tables, framed flower photos, a carousel style display case, records, and an iMac so old I had never seen one like it. Then there was the damage. A shelf that had been full of glasses was smashed from the top to the floor and someone had spray painted the walls. That is my problem with graffiti. Every time I see paint I also see everything destroyed. The whole time we kept hearing sirens outside and nobody ever came to the plaza.

The gym had boarded windows and one smashed one, with a sign for $9.95 a month. Inside it was huge. A weight sat on the floor, there were empty rooms I took for locker rooms and showers, and a table tennis area behind a blocked off door. Somebody had broken in and boarded it again, and the windows were broken, five in one spot and three in another.

Other units were harder to read. A locked Asian food market had supermarket fridges you could see through the glass. A former piano shop still had three pianos and a stuffed monkey, and a hole in the ceiling above them. A floral shop had an electric service termination notice taped up. The mortgage office was the cleanest surprise. Three filing cabinets, a bunch of computers, a giant world map and a couple of golf clubs. A restaurant called Ellie’s still had its dishes, skillets, a chandelier and an open sign that was strange to see in that shape. It looked like it closed during Covid.

The last stop was a kids clothing store, and it was the one I’d call the best find. It was not fully loaded, but nearly. Racks of shoes and boots, high chairs, a double stroller, a car seat, a little kids bike and a cart of toys with a Monopoly Junior box on top. The store is still in business at another location. The stuff that stayed was going to the demolition crew.

Why International Plaza is abandoned

The decline was slow. The Daily Herald reported on April 2, 2024 that Burger Baron, one of the last businesses in the plaza, closed in September 2023. The owner, AGOLF LLC, had been cited and fined tens of thousands of dollars for property code violations. By the time that story ran, bulldozers had started on the northeast corner of the property.

The developer is Schaumburg based UrbanStreet Group, which had the property under contract. The plan covered the plaza and seven village owned parcels next to it and was priced at about $100 million. It includes six four story apartment buildings with 266 market rate units, a 37 unit senior building and up to four commercial buildings with about 34,000 square feet of retail, restaurant and day care space. In November 2023 the village board approved a memorandum of understanding for it, 7 to 1, with about $3.3 million from TIF reserves, a $5.3 million revenue bond and a $2.79 million junior note.

What happens next

As of that April 2024 report the redevelopment agreement was still being negotiated, and village staff expected reviews by advisory commissions and a vote by the village board in the following months.

The last thing I have of this place is a double stroller and a Monopoly box in a cart, waiting for a demolition crew.