Commercial developers would need to get a special use permit from the village, notes Sheldon Good & Co. EVP Michael A. Fine, to remove three homes and a horse barn. However, commercial redevelopment "makes a lot of sense," he says, noting the site is just north of a row of Milwaukee Avenue automobile dealerships. And while the hospital is next door, retail development already is on the east side of Milwaukee Avenue.

The deadline for bids is 4:00 p.m. March 18. While Fine leaves guesswork on the property's value to the market, residential land in this increasingly upscale suburb can be had for $200,000 an acre, while the asking price for commercial land is as high as $450,000 an acre. Grubb & Ellis is offering a 7.25-acre site on the northwest corner of the village, already zoned for office, retail and hotel use, for $3.27 million.

"In its day it was an idyllic expanse of land known affectionately to her family as 'The Place'," Fine says in a statement. "Today, with all the development that has since sprung up around it, Mrs. Allen's property has become the largest privately owned parcel of undeveloped real estate along Libertyville's Milwaukee Avenue corridor."

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