The owner of Durbin’s restaurants in the southwest suburbs will pay Tinley Park more than $18,000 a month to rent space for a Teehan’s tavern and adjacent restaurant.
Tom McAuliffe will lease space in a building the village will construct at Oak Park Avenue and North Street that is part of the larger Harmony Square development.
It will include an outdoor music venue and nearby apartments.
The building will be at the site of the former Teehan’s and designed to be a nearly identical replacement.
Licensing agreements for the space were approved by the Village Board at its meeting Tuesday.
Demolition of the former Teehan’s got underway in late March, and the village has estimated it will take a little over a year to have the new space operating.
Supporters and patrons of Teehan’s urged village officials to try to preserve the building, but the village said that would be too costly and demolishing the structure and building new was the best option.
The building that will go up will contain two restaurant spaces, a residential apartment and public washrooms available for people attending events at Harmony Square, according to the village.
Teehan’s will occupy about 2,200 square feet of the building and an adjacent restaurant, Durbin’s Pizza, would take about 10,200 square feet, according to the licensing agreements.
Separate agreements were approved for Teehan’s and the restaurant, and both would be good for 10 years with options of two five-year extensions.
Tinley Park paid $200,000 for the Teehan’s property, including the intellectual and other property, which includes the names Teehan’s and Teehan’s Irish Bar as well as the phone numbers, email address and website.
Regis Teehan operated the bar for 34 years before retiring last September, and it was in her family since 1917.
McAuliffe, owner of Durbin’s Pizza restaurants in the southwest suburbs, operated Teehan’s after her retirement.
McAuliffe operated a Durbin’s for 16 years at 17265 S. Oak Park Ave., just to the north of Teehan’s.
The first business on the Teehan’s site was built in 1852 and called the Pacific Hotel, reflecting the owner’s hope the nearby railroad line would ultimately extend to the Pacific Ocean, according to a May 2003 Chicago Tribune article. It later became the Tinley Park Hotel.
McAuliffe would pay just under $15,300 each month for the restaurant space and about $3,400 per month for the Teehan’s space, according to the agreements.
Those fees would initially remain flat, then increase 2% each year starting in the fourth year of the agreements.
Both businesses would operate from 11 a.m. until 2 a.m. seven days a week, according to the agreements.
The village is also looking at a bond sale of $50 million to pay for infrastructure work throughout the community and particularly in and around Harmony Square.
The village notes things such as water and sewer lines are among the oldest in Tinley Park, much of which has been in place for at least 70 years.
At a committee meeting Tuesday, trustees approved advancing the issue to the June 4 Village Board meeting.
The village’s Finance Department, in a memo to the Village Board, points out the village has more than adequate debt capacity, and caps its property tax levy for debt service at no more than $350,000 a year.
That means, according to the memo, the property taxes village property owners pay toward debt service would not increase regardless of how much debt is sold.
The memo indicates that one outstanding bond issue will be retired this December.
