Turk: Senor Tequila Can't Stop Jefferson St. 'Revitalization'

JOLIET, IL — During the Joliet City Council's first meeting of this year, Joliet's politicians voted to declare the long abandoned Senor Tequila property on West Jefferson Street a public nuisance. At the time of the vote, outgoing interim city manager Jim Hock raised the possibility that Council should instead delay the vote indefinitely.

Hock said that representatives from Basinger's Pharmacy notified him they now had the money to tear down the building and move forward with their four-year-old stalled redevelopment: a new Basinger's Pharmacy, plus a liquor store, on the former Senor Tequila site.

The Council chose to take the vote anyway and make Senor Tequila a public nuisance.

That was six weeks ago.

Over the past several years, the empty Senor Tequila became a haven for transients to gather and drink booze and for drug addicts to congregate and share needles on the back stairwell.

The deterioration of the Senor Tequila building and parking lot has also had a negative impact on several surrounding businesses along West Jefferson Street.

The Baker's Square next door closed in March 2019 and the original asking price was well more than $1 million. Nobody came forward to buy it in 2019 and in 2020.

Last week, the Baker's Square property was scheduled to be the subject of a public auction, and the most recent asking price on the real estate market was around $475,000.

At Tuesday night's meeting, Turk said it's obvious Senor Tequila, in its current state of blight, continues to negatively impact the city's efforts to attract other positive business developments to the surrounding corridor including "the pie shop."

Turk said that Joliet's West Jefferson Street is now in the midst of a great revitalization, and Turk does not want to see the "Senor Tequila eyesore" hinder or slow that effort.

He said the Basinger's Pharmacy officials have been "stringing us along" about plans to tear down the property for the past four years now, and it's time the city step up efforts to clean up this highly visible eyesore.

After hearing Turk's sentiment, Joliet's new permanent city manager Jim Capparelli spoke up, saying he will immediately follow up on the matter and report back to the City Council about where things stand on the Senor Tequila public nuisance status.

Before taking over as city manager in early January, Capparelli worked for several years as a lawyer in private practice with Joliet's Castle Law Firm, which has a law office several blocks up the road, at West Jefferson Street and Fairlane Drive.

"I know they have been stringing us along," Capparelli agreed with Turk.