Tag Archives: Lake County

An incomplete way to frame it: Lake County loses jobs and HQs to Chicago

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The shift of headquarters and jobs from Lake County to downtown Chicago leaves a number of suburban buildings vacant:

The far north suburban county is bracing for the loss of about 2,700 office jobs by early next year, from prominent companies Walgreens Boots Alliance, Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. and Mondelez International…

History indicates corporate campuses in Deerfield and nearby suburbs — and the homes and businesses those high-paying office jobs support — can weather the storm. But the challenge has only intensified as more companies move jobs to downtown Chicago, in pursuit of younger workers who want to live in the city…

McDonald’s, Kraft Heinz, Motorola Mobility, Hillshire Brands, Gogo, Wilson Sporting Goods, Motorola Solutions and Beam Suntory are examples of companies that have moved their headquarters downtown in the past few years. Others, such as Walgreens, have established large offices in the city while retaining suburban headquarters…

A 2013 report outlining the county’s economic development strategy said losing any of the larger employers in the biopharma industry — such as Takeda — would be “devastating” to the county.

Such moves have real consequences for suburban areas. Filling and/or reviving large office parks and suburban campuses can be difficult. The loss of jobs and tax revenue can hurt.

At the same time, a story like this can reinforce notions that when Lake County loses jobs to the city of Chicago, this is a bad outcome. When the suburbs lose jobs to the big city or vice versa, someone is winning and someone is losing. Not necessarily: the region is still benefiting as the cities and suburbs depend on each other. From the perspective of the whole region, there is good news here:

-The fact that these companies want to stay in the Chicago region, whether in the suburbs or downtown, hints at the economic vitality and amenities of the whole area. With the bad news of Illinois’ financial issues, big companies are not leaving the state en masse.

-Other parts of the article hint that while the vacancy rate for office space is high in Lake County, there is still some business demand for these headquarters and campuses. Some locations might require more work to find a sizable replacement but they are not necessarily sitting empty for years.

-This presents opportunities – perhaps unwanted – for suburban municipalities to rethink suburban office parks and campuses. Rather than waiting for the big company to use the whole property, these could be future mixed-use sites featuring office, retail, recreational, and residential space. Rather than rely on single employers, suburbs could work to tie these campuses into the larger fabric of their community.

This could become a bigger problem if suburban properties stay vacant for a long time but these changes seem fairly normal for now: businesses move locations within a region to chase what they think are attractive options for workers (particularly young ones) and their bottom line. Perhaps more importantly, the suburb versus city battle over prestigious headquarters does not need to sour relations or perceptions. The region as a whole can continue to thrive even if there are changes to address within the metropolitan area.

Continued lack of affordable housing in Chicago’s northern suburbs

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Affordable housing is a problem throughout the Chicago region but here is a closer look at the current state of affordable housing in Chicago’s North Shore suburbs:

Under the law, the Illinois Housing Development Authority in 2004 identified 49 communities where less than 10 percent of the housing was deemed affordable. At least nine of them are on the North Shore, including Winnetka, Wilmette, Highland Park, Deerfield, Northbrook, and Lake Forest.

Reactions to the law varied in those communities. Highland Park aggressively pursued ways to make affordable housing available. Northbrook took a more casual approach and set general goals. In Winnetka, after years of heated debate, officials voted in 2011 to just stop talking about the issue…

But over the last ten years, the affordable housing that has been added “is a drop in a bucket,” she said.

“The economy is bouncing back, but a lot of these communities are still catering to the rich,” said Schechter.

A significant barrier for affordable housing in the North Shore is the lack of undeveloped land and the high price of properties, said Richard Koenig, executive director of the Housing Opportunity Development Corporation.

It doesn’t look to me like much has changed. The 2004 Illinois law hasn’t done much as many communities already met the requirements (based on a formula that may then be too lax), it has little ability to enforce anything, and there are still continuing issues of affordable housing. I think there is also some disconnect about who the affordable housing is supposed to serve. In my experience, when suburbs like those on the North Shore talk about affordable housing, they are more willing to do something when they are talking about public servants, like teachers, police officers, and firefighters, or people who have been in the community before, like kids who grew up in the suburb or retired residents, who have difficulty living there on limited incomes. These suburbs are not thinking as much about the retail or service industry or laborers that might work in their communities.

This shouldn’t be too surprising: given the opportunity, most wealthier suburbs will zone land in such a way that the housing prices and options cater to a wealthier crowd. Affordable housing is an issue that should be taken care of by other suburbs, such as more working- or lower-class communities.

Strong suburban reaction to a roundabout turns to praise

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I was struck by a reaction of a few Lake County residents to a roundabout built several years ago:

When the first roundabout was proposed in Lake County, the response was extreme.

“People were so skeptical, I would seriously get phone calls from people saying there would be deaths at that corner and it would be on my conscience,” recalled Lake County Board Member Ann Maine, of Lincolnshire, who is also president of the Lake County Forest Preserve District.

More than two years after the roundabout opened at Everett Road and Riverwoods Road as an alternative to a traditional intersection, Maine said she hasn’t been stuck in a backup at the intersection and gets occasional notes from people who say they love the change.

That is quite a reaction to a roundabout and the favorable comments afterward are notable. There are studies about such things but I’m guessing those who had such a strong reaction to the roundabout either didn’t read such studies or wouldn’t believe their findings anyway. But, it is just a different way of configuring an intersection that most people get used to fairly quickly and can actually be more efficient.

How can Lake County, Illinois be #9 on the list of “America’s Most Miserable Cities”?

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Forbes just put out their 2013 list of “America’s Most Miserable Cities.” Out of the top 20, there is one that is not like the others: Lake County, Illinois at #9. Here is the short description of why Lake County made the list:

The Chicago suburb is one of the richest counties in the U.S., as measured by per capita income. But home prices are down 29% over the past 5 years. Other drawbacks: long commutes and lousy weather.

There are numerous problems with this:

1. Calling an entire county a suburb is strange. Lake County is made up of dozens of suburbs which are quite varied. For example, look at quick overviews of Deerfield versus Grayslake versus Waukegan. Lumping them all together is silly and is one of the traps many people make when looking at the suburbs: they are not all the same kind of places.

2. How does a county end up on this list when the rest of the top 20 are cities? In terms of categories, a suburban county is not in the same category as a city. While there might be some identity in saying one is from “Lake County,” it is nowhere close to being a singular city.

3. Just glancing at this description and the top 20 cities on the list, I have to wonder how Lake County could even make the list. According to this list, Lake County is the 56th wealthiest county in the United States with a median household income of $74,266. Here is a bit more on the methodology:

We looked at the 200 largest metropolitan statistical areas and divisions in the U.S. to determine America’s Most Miserable Cities. The minimum population to be eligible was 259,000. We ranked each area on 9 factors, including average unemployment rate between 2010 and 2012; median commute times to work for 2011 based on U.S. Census data; violent crimes per capita from the FBI’s 2011 Uniform Crime Report.

We included three housing metrics: the change in median home prices between 2009 and 2012; foreclosure rates in 2012, as compiled by RealtyTrac; and property tax rates based on median real estate taxes paid and median home values in 2011 per the U.S. Census. We factored in income tax rates and the weather in each metro on factors relating to temperature, precipitation and humidity. The data metrics are weighted equally in the final scoring.

We tweaked the methodology in this year’s list in response to feedback from readers, dropping our rankings of both pro sports team success and political corruption, since both were based on regional, rather than city-specific data. We also added a new measure—net migration—which we see as a clear gauge of whether or not residents feel a community is worth living in.

If this methodology puts Lake County at #9, Forbes may want to revisit their criteria.

Diamond grinding to reduce highway noise

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One Lake County community is paying out of its own pocket to reduce noise on I-294 by diamond grinding the road:

The village [of Green Oak] will pay nearly $338,000 for a process called diamond grinding to hopefully reduce the racket along that stretch of road.

“The idea here was to grind it and produce a quieter pavement and pavement noise in the lower frequency range so it wasn’t so obnoxious,” Village Engineer Bill Rickert said.

That sound also described as “singing” by Rickert spurred several complaints after the tollway widening was completed about three years ago, and sent village leaders on a quest for a solution…

In the simplest terms, the concrete road surface had been tined or grooved perpendicular to the road surface, he said. The diamond grinding changed the grooves to run parallel, evoking “more of a corduroy-type feel,” and theoretically producing lower noise levels in frequencies less noticeable to the human ear.

While diamond grinding emerged as the village’s proposed solution, it isn’t used by the tollway as a noise reducing technique.

It would be interesting to see how this solution compares with building sound barriers – is diamond grinding cheaper or more effective? If this is an effective technique and people agree about this, why doesn’t the Tollway use it?

I have had some more interest in this lately because our neighborhood borders a busy arterial road that is being expanded from 2 to 4 lanes. Because of this, sound barriers have been installed. I don’t think they look too bad with a sort of faux beige brick look. Granted, I don’t live in a house that backs up to these walls and I assume there is a price (in housing value) to pay for backing up to these walls. Going further, at night we can faintly hear the nearby highway that is 1.5 miles away – it is a sort of background noise. But having grown up close to a railroad track which produced more sporadic but louder noise, can’t you simply get used to these things? Perhaps the difference here is that people in these neighborhoods near the Tri-State haven’t had this level of noise until the highway was expanded.

County forest preserves benefit from economic downturn as they purchase cheaper land

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The reduction in land values has not been bad for everyone: the Chicago Tribune reports that Chicago area forest preserves have bought up more land than anticipated in the past few years. Among the findings:

Flush with $185 million from a 2008 bond sale, the [Lake County] district went on a buying spree, gobbling up some 3,400 acres of land. The second-largest forest preserve system in the state at 29,300 acres, the 53-year old district has grown by nearly 12 percent since the onset of the recession.

“We spent down the money quicker than we had anticipated, mainly because there were so many good buying opportunities for us in 2009 and 2010, especially,” Hahn said…

Founded in 1971, the McHenry County Conservation District has essentially doubled over the last decade to just less than 25,000 acres…

Though the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County’s biggest growth spurt was in the 1970s, the 25,000-acre district managed to add some 2,400 acres over the last decade…

Racing the clock against development in one of the fastest-growing counties in the country, the Forest Preserve District of Will County has added about 8,300 acres since 1999, increasing its holdings by about two-thirds to nearly 21,000 acres…

The timing has been more fortuitous in Kane County, where the Forest Preserve District has added nearly 12,000 acres since 1999, increasing its holdings by 170 percent.

The only county forest preserve that didn’t add a significant amount of land was Cook County which likely has little available land. There hasn’t been too much news about these acquisitions in the Chicago area, even as these land purchases have been funded by bond sales approved by the public.

Overall, this has presented these districts with an opportunity to purchase land they might not have been able to purchase in better times. Particularly in some of the booming counties, such as Will or McHenry, this opportunity may have been the last one before suburban growth took up too much land.

This does lead to another question: how much land should Forest Preserves aim to have? I know there are recommendations about how much parkland or open space there should be for a set amount of people. Is most of this newly acquired land going to be open space/natural settings or more developed parks and recreation areas? Would there be a point where the Forest Preserves will stop purchasing or will they keep acquiring land forever?