Land bank takes ownership of Jaffe building

KANKAKEE — Kankakee Regional Land Bank Executive Director the Rev. Montele Crawford was recently handed the keys to the former Jaffe Drugs building at 217 E. Court St. in Kankakee.

The Land Bank finally closed on the purchase at the end of December of the aging structure, and comparing the Jaffe building to a vehicle — perhaps Crawford didn’t get the keys to a Ferrari, but the property certainly has the potential to become an SUV.

Land Bank board members also took a recent tour of the Jaffe building, and there’s a lot of cleanup that needs to be done before it can be sold to a developer or an individual who can bring it back to life.

“We probably all should’ve had masks on,” Crawford said. “It’s just atrocious.”

The Land Bank is preparing to get the property, which has been closed for several years, cleaned up.

“I think they left work one day and then just didn’t come back,” said Barbi Brewer-Watson, Land Bank board member at this past week’s board of directors meeting.

It’s working with the only company in Illinois, Midwest Environmental Consulting Inc., that’s equipped to handle this type of work.

Midwest Environmental’s headquarters is in Chicago with offices in Yorkville, Peoria and Rockford.

The first floor and basement of the Jaffe building still has pharmaceuticals lying around among other miscellaneous items. The pharmaceuticals just can’t be thrown in a Dumpster.

“The scope of the project is a three person team with their van, the waste transport vehicle that they need,” said Brewer-Watson, who is also executive director of Kankakee’s Economic & Community Development Agency. “They have to have some solution that is a pharmaceutical grade destroyer solution. They have to have 55-gallon drum, a 30-gallon drum, 15-gallon drum, five-gallon drum, and a one-gallon packing box.”

Brewer-Watson added that the cleanup crew will also have to use other blending solvents, gallons of acid bases and oxidizers to treat the area after the product is removed.

“They also have toxic liquids in there and solids that they have to incinerate, so they’ll have to be doing that work in there,” she said. “They also have to dispose of up to 15 gallons of poison inhalation hazards, so that’s in there as well.”

It’s kind of a Mr. Clean on steroids.

Midwest Environmental originally bid on the work in 2022, and its updated proposal in September of 2024 didn’t include lead and asbestos removal that was on the first bid.

“I need to clarify that as well,” Brewer-Watson said. “… I know they have the lead and asbestos report from the findings that are there, so we know it’s there. I just don’t on the new proposal. It wasn’t in the cover letter that was in the original, so I want to make sure that they included all of that in the [new proposal]. If not, that’s another thing that we need to get clear of right away.”

The second and third floors of the building are vacant but extremely dirty.

COST OF CLEANUP

The price tag for the environmental cleanup is approximately $62,000, and the city of Kankakee is prepared to handle the brunt of the costs through a mixture of creative financing.

“We have to figure that out, but basically yes,” said Brewer-Watson on the city picking up the tab.

Board member Matt Oleszewski said the Kankakee Development Corporation has committed $10,000 to the cleanup. The city was also prepared to pay $30,000 to the project based on the initial bid proposal from 2022 that has since more than doubled.

Brewer-Watson said the city is looking at other funding sources for the cleanup.

“Environmental cleanup is a TIF-eligible expense, and this is in the TIF district,” she said. “It’s a new TIF district, so there may not be very many funds in there, but if there’s something, maybe we could pull from that. We’re also looking for our environmental demolition and clearance grant money from CDBG [Community Development Block Grant programs] and see if there’s any allowable funds in there.

“So there’s a couple of things that are going on at the city to see how we can close the gap for that cost.”

CDBG is a program through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

How soon would the cleanup start?

“I think that we will get to the cleanup before we figure out where all the money is coming from because the building needs to be secured and safe,” Brewer-Watson said. “It’s really about getting the green light from the mayor’s office and then calling [Midwest Environmental] and scheduling and make sure they can get to Kankakee.”

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