Update 10/23/15 – On Oct. 19, the Wheaton City Council unanimously approved the request from developers Doug Riccolo, Mike Siurek and The Webb Family to raze the former car dealership and build a self-storage facility. The council will take a final vote on the plan in two weeks, according to the source.

Although city officials have said a self-storage facility isn’t the most appealing use for the site, the property is zoned for it, and the developers aren’t seeking any variations, the source reported. The council had minimal objections to the development plan but did ask what materials would be used for the building’s exterior. The city’s staff had previously asked the developers to match nearby commercial buildings by adding more precast red-brick panels.

Siurek called this design “institutional” and “conservative,” and said it would not appeal to luxury-car owners seeking storage. “Our identity is to appeal to the high-end car user, and it's more progressive,” he said. “It's edgy, it's modern, it's really not an institutional, conservative look. We're trying to add some of these design elements to keep it fresh and edgy. Those are the customers [who] have an interest in high-end automobiles.”

Councilman Todd Scalzo expressed concerns about the building looking “cheap.” “The only concern I have … is that when I've seen renderings before for kind of a modern, minimalist-type of structure, we've been kind of burned on that before, and the materials end up looking cheap, and it doesn't really come across that way in the renderings,” he said. “So if someone could assure me that this is going to look nice and not cheap, I'd feel better.”

The building will have a mix of precast concrete, stone, an all-glass curtain wall and panels made of carbon fiber, Siurek said. “It will look like some of the newer dealerships that you might drive by,” he said, adding that it will have some colorful panels. “Ours aren't going to be ostentatious. They'll be in the tan tone or graphite.”

The developers have agreed to extend the precast red-brick panels along the building’s base and exterior walls of the storage units on the land south of Taft Avenue to match the main building, the source reported.

Car storage users will access the facility from Roosevelt Road. Self-storage tenants will enter off Taft Avenue. 8/26/15 – A self-storage developer is seeking permission from the city to turn a former car-sales site in Wheaton, Ill., into a self-storage facility. The proposal includes razing the Packey Webb Auto Center at 1830 E. Roosevelt Road and constructing a storage facility with more than 130,500 square feet of space, which would include 18,650 square feet for luxury-car storage. The facility would be similar to the 130,000-square-foot U-Stor-It property the developers built at 2100 Ogden Ave. in Lisle, Ill., the source reported.

The 3.46-acre auto site includes an ancillary parcel on the south side of Taft Avenue, south of the main building. The two-story self-storage facility would be on the main parcel and include 759 storage units, 44 of which would be for cars, according to the source. Outdoor storage units would be built on the land south of Taft.

The dealership first opened in 1964 as Packey Webb Ford. In 2007, the dealer purchased

Joe Madden Ford in Downers Grove, Ill., and moved its new-car sales to the property. The Roosevelt Road location was changed to Packey Webb, which sold used cars and offered auto-service work. City officials changed the zoning in 2008 to allow the used-car dealership.

The city’s planning and zoning board will review the self-storage proposal at its Sept. 9 meeting.

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