Land Bank working to acquire Jaffe Drugs building

KANKAKEE — With little fanfare the Kankakee Regional Land Bank Authority has been making inroads in getting dilapidated properties either back on the tax rolls or removed as eyesores.

Although two Kankakee County rural properties were recently demolished, the Land Bank did return a duplex at 831 S. Washington Ave. in Kankakee from a vacancy to an occupied house.

The Land Bank is now set to take on a much more visible and significant property. This property resides in the heart of downtown Kankakee.

The Land Bank, created in 2021 through an intergovernmental agreement between Kankakee County and the city of Kankakee, has set its sights on a highly-visible property — the former Jaffe Drugs building at 217 E. Court St.

“We have been in court for two years with the family to get [the property] back,” said Barbi Brewer-Watson, who is the secretary of the Land Bank board as well as Kankakee’s Economic & Community Development executive director, on Thursday at its board of directors monthly meeting.

The Land Bank bought the property from the county in a tax sale, and it has been working to get the deed processed and recorded in order to take ownership of 217 E. Court St., get it cleaned up and sold.

“We’re going to go through the remediation and put it up for sale,” said the Rev. Montele Crawford, who is the executive director of the Kankakee Regional Land Bank Authority and senior pastor at Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church.

“We’re still waiting on the deed, but the process is moving forward. … It’s just taking a lot longer than we had originally anticipated,” he said.

Brewer-Watson said paperwork with the county should be processed in the next few weeks.

From there the Land Bank can then get new bids to clean up the property. Two years ago a bid to clean up the Jaffe building was $30,000. A more recent bid from earlier this year was more than double.

“We have some cleanup to do in that building,” said Brewer-Watson. “… But now everything related to environmental has gone up exponentially in pricing.”

“And we want to make sure that the cleanup is done prior to someone else taking it because we don’t want them to not do it,” said Matt Oleszewski, Land Bank board member and senior vice president/chief lending officer of Peoples Bank of Kankakee County.

How much is the old Jaffe building worth?

Lisa Sanford, chairwoman of the Land Bank board, said it’s unknown because no one has been through the 3-story structure.

“We don’t know how bad it really is,” said Sanford, who is also a Realtor with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Speckman Realty. “We’ll be assessing that, because we think that there’s an apartment upstairs, there’s a basement. We don’t know the structure.”

Brewer-Watson said since the building was vacated, the city of Kankakee did some work to secure the windows and completed some facade work so debris wouldn’t fall onto the street.

If the Jaffe building can be renovated, the uses might include office space, retail or possibly apartments. The 8 One Five bar a couple doors down at 239 E. Court St. has been a success after taking over the former Rock Inn establishment.

Around the corner, Piggush Engineering relocated from Bourbonnais in 2022 to 149 N. Schuyler Ave. in a completely renovated structure. A few blocks away, several retail storefronts have reenergized South West Avenue just north of Station Street.

DEED RESTRICTION

Oleszewski emphasized the Land Bank will be using a deed restriction on all the properties it acquires in the future and sells. The deed restriction means that if the owner doesn’t get a certificate of occupancy within one year, the property reverts back to the Land Bank.

“We can always extend it,” he said.

The deed restriction will also apply to all properties that the trustee for Kankakee County sells. Those are properties where the delinquent taxes weren’t bought. The county contracts Joseph E. Meyer & Associates, of Edwardsville, to be the trustee.

“Every property the trustee is selling, whether we buy it or not, it doesn’t matter, that buyer is getting that restriction,” Oleszewski said. “So you go to the trustee, buy a property at the auction and just sit on it, we’re going to take your property and put it back in.”

The potential buyers will be fully aware of the stipulation. The policy will prevent properties from sitting vacant and taxes aren’t paid, and then it’s another three years until the next tax sale.

“We’re the only county in the state of Illinois that has this ability to put this together with this deed restriction,” Sanford said.

TRACKING CAPABILITY

The Land Bank also began using this past month an online portal, ePropertyplus, that streamlines the process on keeping track of all the properties that it has acquired.

“That’s important because now we have a mechanism for tracking [properties],” Oleszewski said.

Brian White, a representative with ePropertyplus, said, via Zoom hookup at the meeting, that the site is really helpful for both the Land Bank staff as well as applicants looking for properties. There’s also a public site on ePropertyplus.

“The purpose of using the public site is as you have properties that are coming in, you can very easily publish those onto your public site for marketing,” White said. “Then you also have the ability to pull them off of the site if you need to for some reason.”

Financially, the Kankakee Regional Land Bank Authority began with state grants of $150,000 each for the city and the county. The city of Kankakee also recently gave $50,000 in ARPA funds to the Land Bank, and the county is considering contributing as well in 2025.

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