Potential plans for an Olive Garden restaurant to come to Sycamore remain hinged on a land sale that hasn’t happened yet.

Sycamore City Manager Michael Hall told community and business leaders at a Sycamore Chamber of Commerce event this month that he wasn’t aware of a timeline for the new restaurant.

“The person that owns the land, they haven’t even sealed the deal yet,” Hall said in response to a question from the public about when construction of the potential Olive Garden would break ground. “There’s a debate right now and some fine-tuning of what they wanted to do.”

Hall confirmed that the land Darden Restaurants is seeking to purchase on the southeast corner of Route 23 and Gateway Drive is owned by Northwestern Medicine. The property is directly across from Northwestern Medicine Kishwaukee Hospital at the Sycamore-DeKalb line, city records show.

Health system spokesperson Christopher King said that the land sale hasn’t gone through because the deal’s details are being worked out.

“Once both sides agree to the terms, we would anticipate the sale of the property,” King wrote.

Darden Restaurants representatives did not respond to requests for comment.

Hall told the public that whether the restaurant is built will likely come down to whether a deal is reached between the two businesses.

“Now, the plan would be to open next year, April or May, but that deal could fall apart if that landowner goes, ‘You know what, this is what we want. If you don’t do what we want, you can’t have the land,’” Hall said.

In February, the Sycamore City Council approved a resolution that Hall called a “performance-based restaurant tax revenue-sharing agreement” that does not include upfront financial assistance.

Over a maximum of 10 years, the potential Olive Garden would receive incentive payments from a portion of the city’s restaurant, bar, and package liquor tax revenues generated by the restaurant, Hall wrote in a city document.

For the first three years of taxable operation, the restaurant would receive 75% from that pool of package liquor tax revenue back from the city, 50% from four to seven years and 25% after eight years.

The business incentive would be capped at $400,000, regardless of when that amount is reached over the 10-year period of the agreement, documents show.

“This is hard, because in economic development, we don’t own the land,” Hall said.