T.J. Maxx looking to make moves across the street from current DeKalb location

DeKALB – The T.J. Maxx store in DeKalb is looking to make some moves across the street from its current Oakland Place Shopping Center location.

According to a Thursday social media post from the City of DeKalb, the store will be relocating to a new 27,000 sq. ft. space off of Illinois Route 23 near ALDI, which also made a similar move across the street from its previous location now housing Harbor Freight Tools and opened its current location in July 2019.

“This is right next to ALDI to the north,” Scott Zak, management analyst for the City of DeKalb, wrote in a Thursday email. “So that was the former J.C. Penney space.”

Petitioners affiliated with the store also expressed the desire for a wall sign twice the frontage of the storefront instead of the allowable 1.5 times the frontage.

The City received a petition from the owners of the Northland Plaza Shopping Center along Sycamore Road to amend the wall sign regulations for the building at the rear of the property.

According to the June 23 rezoning petition submitted to the city, the setback from building frontage to the right of way of Sycamore Road is 630 feet. The petitioner wrote the proposed sign will be uniform with others in the area the store is looking to move to.

“A larger sign will give T.J. Maxx better visibility,” the petitioner wrote. “The building facade/parapet wall is very large in area, and our new proposed sign will look architecturally correct versus looking undersized. The other anchor tenants have letters that at least 5′-0″ or greater in height.”

The Northland Plaza Shopping Center currently includes Planet Fitness, ALDI, Ross, Petsmart and Hobby Lobby, according to the city’s social media post.

The DeKalb Planning and Zoning Commission will hold a public hearing regarding the sign amendment scheduled at 6 p.m. July 19 in the Yusunas Meeting Room at the DeKalb Public Library, 308 Oak St.

“TJ Maxx is a long-standing retailer in DeKalb,” city officials wrote in the social media post. “And City officials are pleased they have decided to remain in the community.”