Transformation of old Rolling Meadows Sam’s Club into Asian shopping center begins

Closed for nearly 15 years, the old Sam’s Club in Rolling Meadows finally will have some activity — though you might not be able to see it.

Construction crews will be working inside the 129,000-square-foot big box, tearing out old electrical and mechanical systems to make the cavernous space ready for the new owner’s planned Asian-focused lifestyle center of restaurants, shops and entertainment.

The $10 million redevelopment on the northwest corner of Golf and Algonquin roads — to be named Pacifica on Golf — will be anchored by an Asian grocery store, and include a family entertainment venue and six restaurants.

Though the building has sat empty since the local Sam’s was among a slew of nationwide closings by the warehouse club retailer in 2010, developer Windfall Group and city officials in June set an aggressive construction schedule that called for shovels in the ground in September and a ribbon-cutting by January 2026.

With most tenants lined up and anxious to open for business, aldermen recently agreed to release a city building permit for interior demolition work. A separate permit for exterior site upgrades will be given after the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago finishes its review of the stormwater management plan in the next month.

“When a building sits empty for years, they’re going to have a lot of work to do before they even start putting new stuff in there,” said Glen Cole, Rolling Meadows’ assistant city manager and community development director. “They’ll have a blank slate. They won’t be working around old stuff. But the complicated things from a code perspective all happen (now): sizing electrical service for all these different tenants, fire protection for all of them, and so on.”

After this “makeready type-of-work,” Cole says, workers will construct interior walls to create at least 10 tenant spaces.

Windfall has announced leases or letters of intent from these businesses:

• Enson Market, a 42,789-square-foot grocery store catering to the Asian community.

• A still-unnamed 33,636-square-foot family entertainment/recreation center.

• Infunite Claw Machine Arcade, an 8,000-square-foot gaming center.

• Daiso, an 8,000-square-foot Japanese chain store selling home decor, stationery, food and cosmetics.

• Mango Mango, a 1,138-square-foot dessert shop serving blended fruit drinks, teas, cakes and other treats.

• Gyu San, a 4,628-square-foot Japanese barbecue restaurant.

• Lao Sze Chuan, which serves traditional Sichuan cuisine, and Te’Amo bubble tea, sharing a 5,000-square-foot space.

• KyuRamen, a 3,740-square-foot Japanese ramen eatery.

• Izakaya Nana, a 7,125-square-foot traditional sit-down Japanese restaurant and sake bar.

• Shanghai Dumplings, a 3,236-square-foot restaurant.

Pacifica on Golf, the proposed $10 million transformation of the former Sam’s Club big box in Rolling Meadows, would concentrate restaurants and an outdoor courtyard along the Golf Road frontage, while an Asian grocery store would anchor the development along Algonquin Road.
Courtesy of city of Rolling Meadows

“They’ve had tenants secured for a while,” Cole said. “When you’re not building speculatively — when you actually have tenants and they want to get in there — you want to move faster. I don’t think they’d have the same sense of urgency if they were, let’s say, 50% leased.”

Besides interior renovations to the one-story building, exterior work on the 9-acre site will include changes to traffic circulation, pedestrian access, utilities, parking and loading.

A bioswale — with sandy soil and native plants — will hold stormwater along the south edge of the eastern parking lot, while the southern parking lot will be rebuilt and reconfigured.

Even during the early interior renovation process, Cole said a traffic plan will be in place to direct trucks hauling material from the site.