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This landmark mid-century modern house in the Chicago suburbs is free to anyone who can move it, but experts say relocating it may be a challenge

INSIDER 2/24/2022 insider@insider.com (Joey Hadden,AJ LaTrace)

A home in Illinois is completely free, but the buyer has to move it by April 1. Julia Thavong

The home is free if you can move it by April 1, preservationist Shauna Wiet told Insider.
The modern home in Elgin, Illinois, needs to be moved to make room for new industrial developments.
While the house itself is free, moving it may not be easy or cheap, experts told Insider.

Time is running out for a historic mid-century modern home tucked away in the suburbs of Chicago. However, the property's owner and local stakeholders are working together in a final attempt in the effort to save the home and are offering it at a bargain price: $0.

New developments take over the property

The home, located at 35W655 Tollgate Road in Elgin, Illinois, was designed and built in 1967 by architect John Schmidtke as his personal residence. And similar to the other glass box modernist homes of the time, the low-slung residence was meant to fit into its natural surroundings, not take away from them.

The home at 35W655 Tollgate Road in Elgin, Illinois. Julia Thavong

However, in recent years, industrial development has sprung up around the property, encroaching on what was once rural prairie in the 1960s. And in the coming months, a new industrial development is set to take over the site.

Developer High Street Logistics has been cleared to build two large facilities on the 32-acre site, an October report from the Chicago Tribune indicates.

Anyone interested in taking the home has until April to move it, says Shauna Wiet, a local real estate agent and chair of the Kane County Historic Preservation Commission.

"This home does not belong in a landfill," Wiet says about the modernist home. "But the difficulty is that the developer wants it out of there by April 1 and we have been struggling with where it could go."

A recent post on the popular Cheap Old Houses Instagram page has brought renewed attention to the house, earning 74,000 likes and hundreds of comments since February 15. And while the home is truly being offered for free, Wiet says that the property owner and preservation stakeholders are really only considering takers who have a feasible plan.

"If we can get one legitimate person who has the wherewithal to move it, it's a great house," Wiet says. "It could be on a great large five-acre residential lot."

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The prospect is certainly appealing, particularly to millennial and Gen Z buyers who have been priced out of an overheated residential market, but relocating the home won't be an inexpensive task.

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Moving the home may be challenging

Moving the home could certainly be challenging, Wiet suggests, but not impossible. However, it could become cost-prohibitive to relocate the house away from the immediate area.

Diane Guest of Davis Construction Building Movers, a company that moves homes locally around New York, told Insider this house could be expensive to move.

"If this house was on Long Island, it would have to be cut into several pieces," she said. "With the brick and the fireplaces, we would have to band around the bottom of the exterior brick and use extra equipment to carry the weight."

Guest said that when it comes to moving a house, there are usually several steps. First, the buyer would need to get permits to move the house before hiring a general contractor to coordinate with a house moving company, utility companies, and crafters like masons and carpenters. After disconnecting utilities from the house, removing landscaping, and installing the foundation of the new site, the house can finally be moved.

In Guest's opinion, this particular home would likely take about two weeks to move, she said, adding that the house typically moves slightly faster than walking speed.

"I suspect that if you were going a far distance, the mover might load the house onto the equipment differently than we would and it would move faster."

Wiet also believes that the house could be split up into sections for relocation, but moving the move to a site nearby would be the most practical solution. Regardless, she believes that there are other practical reasons for repurposing the old home.

"Not only does it not belong in a landfill, from an architectural and a local, significant standpoint, but the greenest house is the one that's already built," she says. "It makes no sense to throw stuff away and then have to rebuild it if you have a viable use for the home."

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