Millions of dollars of creative financing by Bloomingdale will help create a new level of vitality for two major businesses in the village.

By selling 35 acres of golf course land to the village for use as open space, the owner of the Indian Lakes hotel and golf course obtained part of the financing to help refurbish the property, added a golf practice facility and greatly increased its impact by becoming a Hilton resort instead of a facility without a major hotel brand.

In addition to that recent agreement, Bloomingdale Mayor Bob Iden created a special taxing district for a regional mall, the Stratford Square shopping center, within the ring road encircling the main buildings. Retail stores and offices on the other side of the ring road were not included in the special district.

Financing by Bloomingdale provided part of the money to enable the First Hospitality Group of Rosemont to increase spending to more than $20 million at the Indian Lakes site for hotel and golf course changes, said president Bob Habeeb.

His company that currently has nine other hotel facilities in the suburbs, three in Chicago and one in Peoria as well as 13 more in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Minnesota and Missouri. Now, Hilton Indian Lakes Resort is the only resort property owned by First Hospitality.

Executives at the firm, which has owned Indian Lakes since 2000, are strong believers in branding, and Indian Lakes was the company’s only property which was not branded.

To that end, Habeeb approached Hilton, which had reacted positively to adding a resort-type facility in the area to complement its other hotels in downtown Chicago, near O’Hare and in other suburbs.

“We had a stem-to-stern list of changes, including laying new carpeting, replacing dropped ceilings with drywall ceilings and putting in the special Hilton sleeper beds,” he said. “The hotel had been largely untouched in the 20 years before we bought it in 2000.

“Hilton people thought the dropped ceilings were dated for the building which opened in the 1980s after golf facilities were opened in the 1970s by the original owner, Carson’s.”

There were several other owners of Indian Lakes between Carson’s and First Hospitality.

“In hotel land there is a redo in a facility about every six years, so it was time for changes at Indian Lakes since we purchased the property in 2000 and spent about another $10 million to upgrade infrastructure,” Habeeb said. “The result of the changes required by Hilton has been incredibly powerful in the few months since the changes were made.”

Hilton’s requirement that its resort properties have a golf practice facility started the process whereby First Hospitality put $3 million into the changes and sold 35 acres of land to the village of Bloomingdale for $4.9 million to pay for another portion of the changes.

Tax financing contributed another $4.7 million to the plan by the village to use the land as open space. So, now there will be an 18-hole golf course and a practice facility instead of the previous 36 holes of golf.

Mayor Iden said the financing plan includes a 1 percent increase in the village hotel tax on other facilities in Bloomingdale and a 1 percent sales tax increase on food and beverages sold at Indian Lakes. The new taxes will provide about $100,000 a year more than the previous $450,000 a year for the hotel tax. So, funds will be provided to pay the cost of selling bonds to raise the money.

One of the reasons for the purchase by the Village was to prevent future development on a portion of the golf course land, according to Iden.

“We want open space, not residential development. This is how the residents were sold on supporting this purchase,” he said. “The 35 acres will be very passive. We will leave it mostly grass and a few trails. The Park District will not have anything to do with it.”

Bloomingdale residents will not face a tax increase to pay for the debt, according to the mayor. And he said Hilton’s name alone should help generate additional taxes from increased revenue for a business which “was tucked away from higher visibility places on any expressways like I-355 or I-90.”

Iden said the village also used creative financing to generate funds for the Stratford Square shopping center where the north border is also on Schick Road and the west border is Gary Avenue. The retail center is just north of Army Trail Road.

Village officials approved a business tax district for the stores in the main mall building inside the ring road and will levy a 1 percent occupancy tax. State regulations allow the creation of such a district when retail sales have leveled out or declined, the mayor indicated. He said the tax will help pay for improvements to revitalize the mall.

The goal of the Stratford Square shopping center is to upgrade the mall from a Class B property to a Class A or Class A+ property, according to Bob Allen, general manager of Stratford Square. He said that the pattern followed by the owner, Feldman Mall Properties, is to acquire underperforming properties and redevelop them by pursuing all avenues of financing, including revenue sharing.

The biggest expenditure this year has been $40 million for a new movie theater complex. Allen said Feldman expects to spend about another $40 million overall for tenant build-outs over the next few years.

Allen said the biggest new tenant has been Steve & Barry’s, an apparel retailer with 32,000 square-feet of space.

“Now the next step is to focus on adding restaurants, which I can’t name at this point because the concept is still evolving,” he said. “There may be some quick service restaurants, but the goal is sit-down restaurants.”