‘Flagship’ Sports Authority Coming to Orland Hills

The Orland Towne Center will be getting sportier this summer.

Sports Authority is drafting design plans to open a 56,000 square-foot store to open in Orland Hills in August. The store will be the largest Sports Authority store in the country, according to Orland Towne Center owner Tony Youshaei, and will occupy the former Circuit City and Office Max spaces near 159^th Street and 94^th Avenue. Youshaei also described the new store as a “flagship” for the national chain.

At a December village board meeting, Youshaei and his lawyer Gregg Graines asked for a sales tax incentive to cover about a third of the costs to renovate the existing buildings for the new store.  Sports Authority asked for $2.9 million in construction costs and brokerage fees from Youshaei to convert the two buildings.

The sales tax incentive will pay Youshaei back $1 million of the $2.9 million paid to Sports Authority. In the first year Sports Authority is operating in Orland Hills, the agreement allows 25 percent of sales tax collected from the store to go to Youshaei for four years. If the $1 million hasn’t been paid back in that time, the incentive goes up to 38.5 percent over the next six years, and then a bump up to 43.5 percent for the next 10 years if the million still hasn’t been paid back.

“If it gets there in five years it’s done,” Orland Hills Village Administrator John Daly said. “If he never gets the million in 20 years it stops. But if he gets the million it stops.”

The board unanimously approved the agreement for Sports Authority. The village has used tax incentive agreements before, such as when Wal-Mart opened up in 2006, Daly said.

A 40,000 square-foot Sports Authority store now operates in the Orland Park Place shopping center, next to a Dick’s Sporting Goods store.  When the Orland Park Sports Authority will close for the relocating has not yet been determined.

“It’s a tough site for them where Dick’s is,” Graines said during the December meeting. “And they really want to be a co-tenant with Wal-Mart to establish their presence.”

The store will have a 10-year lease with the Orland Towne Center, with the option to extend the lease for another 20 years, broken into four five-year segments.

The Circuit City building has been vacant for about a year and a half, and Office Max closed its doors on Dec. 24. Construction has not yet begun to combine the two spaces, and the village is still waiting on design plans from Sports Authority.

Daly said at the December meeting that work on the two spaces will include blocking off entrances that remained in the former businesses, new signs isnatleld on the north and west-facing parts of the buildings and changes to the auto bays behind the structures.