Tag Archives: Naperville

Occupy Wall Street in Naperville

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National coverage of the Occupy Wall Street groups has emphasized the city gatherings. But Occupy Wall Street has even made it to conservative Naperville:

About 50 people joined the event, forming a group just slightly larger than the one gathered outside a nearby Apple Store, for demonstrations modeled after the Occupy Wall Street encampment that began last month in lower Manhattan.

Organizers said they will return each Saturday from 10 a.m. to noon until their demands are met. It’s a list that includes increased regulation of banks, rollbacks on the rights of corporations and forgiveness for student loans…

“Well, there’s at least a couple dozen people over there, and there’s what? Maybe (140,000) people here in town? I’d say that’s probably an accurate representation” of support for the demonstrators’ agenda, said Eloe, grinning.

Alesch began planning the event last week with a few friends at a Wheaton coffee shop after hearing about an Occupy Aurora demonstration.

This reminds me of research I’ve seen regarding the diffusion of riots in the 1960s. How widespread are the Occupy Wall Street protests? Is it unusual to find one in a suburb like Naperville that has over 140,000 residents? Are suburbanites more or less likely to support the movement?

If this group continues to protest in Naperville, it will be interesting to see how onlookers and the community responds. An Occupy Aurora protest might make more sense since Aurora is more diverse and less wealthy. But would a continuing protest in Naperville draw more attention?

The widespread (yet sometimes controversial) use of tax rebates for development in Illinois

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It is common practice in Illinois for communities to give tax rebates to firms and companies to locate within their community. The primary reason: it ends up bringing in more sales tax revenue.

Communities throughout the region and the state share sales tax revenues to woo retailers — and they are within their rights to do so under Illinois law. In fact, rebate researcher Geoffrey Propheter found the rebate programs to be more heavily used in Illinois than elsewhere around the country.

For the most part, these programs have flown under the radar until this summer, when the Regional Transportation Authority, the city of Chicago and Cook County legally challenged a variation on their use. In lawsuits, they alleged Channahon and Kankakee used sales tax rebate agreements to divert sales tax collections unfairly from metro Chicago to small “sham offices” in their lower-tax towns — allegations denied by both communities.

With a spotlight now directed at sales-tax rebate programs, some observers are quick to say they stand behind the more common use of rebate programs to attract big-box stores and auto dealers…

But other observers say the programs can skew economic development efforts toward retail. This can be effective in filling city coffers but may not produce as much regional economic growth as office or manufacturing developments, which tend to have higher-paying jobs and an ability to sell products over a much wider geographic range.

The rebate programs also tend to foster bidding wars between towns, with taxpayers picking up the tab. Propheter, a research assistant at the George Washington Institute of Public Policy, found the rebate offers have been used in border skirmishes around the state, from Belleville, outside St. Louis, to southwest suburban Joliet.

This is not a new story: states and communities across the United States have been engaging in such battles for years. In most places, governments are looking out for themselves and have little incentive to participate in regional planning or cooperation. Particularly today, in an era when many municipalities are desperate to find some extra money, providing incentives for developments likely looks attractive.

It would be interesting to know why this has become such a popular tool in Illinois.

Critics of sprawl argue that this helps feed sprawl. Communities look for ways to bring in easy money and big box stores and strip malls are relatively cheap to build. It is also interesting to see what happens when sprawl moves past these communities and the big box stores become less attractive and the new ones are even further out from the city. Shopping malls and big box stores tend not to age well.

Several examples of this come to mind:

1. Some of the verbal back-and-forth between Illinois and several other states, including Wisconsin, Indiana, and New Jersey, over the increasing tax rate in Illinois and casino revenues.

2. The story of how the Fox Valley Mall came to be in Aurora. The story is that the developer played Aurora and Naperville off each other in order to get a better deal for developing land on either the east or west side of Illinois Route 59. Naperville was not as willing to negotiate – and things were looking relatively good for them with the relocation of Bell Labs and a Amoco research facility along I-88 in the 1960s – and the developer picked Aurora. Naperville knew that it had lost a significant source of revenue. To compensate, city leaders turned quickly to drawing up plans to revitalize their downtown, putting into action a plan that suggested building a park along the river (put together a few years later as the Riverwalk), grouping municipal buildings in the downtown (new City Hall, new downtown library), and beautifying some of the streets (see Jefferson Avenue and Jackson Avenue between Main Street and Washington Street). I wonder how the story would be told today in Naperville if their downtown hadn’t become a destination.

When Naperville property switches from proposed church to proposed mosque, opposition emerges

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I’ve thought about this scenario before: in an American community, would a proposed church and proposed mosque of roughly the same sizes and impact on the neighborhood encounter the same amount of opposition from neighbors and community members? Here is a case in Naperville that fits this scenario:

For years, HOPE United Church of Christ advertised on its front lawn plans to build a church on 14 acres it owned just southwest of Naperville, and the minister there says he never heard so much as a peep of displeasure.

But those plans fell through, and now that the church wants to sell the property to another religious group, protests have erupted at the Naperville Planning and Zoning Commission. Handmade signs critical of the deal have sprouted on utility poles…

In DuPage County, the Islamic Center is asking Naperville’s Planning and Zoning Commission to recommend annexing the unincorporated Will County land into Naperville. The city surrounds the parcel, and desirable Naperville subdivisions — Tall Grass and Pencross Knoll — are on three sides of the property.

The Islamic Center says it wants to hold gatherings on the property and use the home located there as an office — just as HOPE United has done in the past.

None of the people who publicly addressed the commission about the center’s proposal at Wednesday night’s meeting specifically objected to a mosque.

But more than a dozen said they opposed the annexation and long-term plan to place a religious center on the site.

Fascinating. The complaints from neighbors sound like a lot of typical NIMBY complaints: concerns about traffic, safety due to more kids being in the neighborhood, whether the mosque will be used late at night or at odd times, and the implicit idea that property values might be negatively influenced by this construction.

At the same time, it seems like there is more going on here. One resident would really rather have a trailer park? In Naperville? So a mosque is more problematic than a trailer park? And there are signs being put up to oppose the mosque? This sounds unusual – but also hints at the real reasons mosques are opposed by suburban residents.

I’ll keep watching the situation.

(I’ve been keeping track of several other mosque proposals in the Chicago region. Here are several posts on a proposed mosque in unincorporated Lombard: 9/13/11, 6/29/11, and 1/28/11. In the Lombard case, it appeared the neighborhood was much more welcoming. One survey suggests Americans would be open to a large Buddhist temple nearby but I would guess this question has some social desirability bias and opinions would change if the proposed temple was right near the respondent’s home.)

Fermilab closes Tevatron; what’s the effect on nearby suburbs and the Chicago region?

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The need for the Tevatron, a particle accelerator, at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, known commonly as Fermilab, has been drastically reduced after the construction of the Large Hadron Collidor in Europe. Therefore, the Tevatron is being shut down and Fermilab is looking to transition to new areas of physics research. My question is this: what effect this will have on the nearby suburbs and the Chicago region?

The article says that several local politicians want to keep research at Fermilab going:

Fermilab will still have star quality, and the estimated 2,300 scientists there will continue playing a critical role in particle physics. The lab could even re-emerge a few decades from now as the leader, officials say.

However, one daunting hurdle remains: obtaining what may be hundreds of billions of dollars in federal funding that officials say is needed to guide the lab’s work into the next generation of research via two projects, known as Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment and Project X…

Over the decades, the cost of upgrades at Fermi could reach hundreds of billions of dollars, a frightening prospect in this troubled economy. But U.S. Reps. Randy Hultgren of Winfield and Judy Biggert of Hinsdale said the funding is crucial. On Wednesday, the two Republican congressmen held a round table on the underground particle-physics program at Fermi.

“I think basic science is the most important thing that will help us to compete in the global economy,” Biggert said. “We have to realize that basic science really drives industry and creates the jobs our children and grandchildren will enjoy.”

I assume most places would want to get federal money and remain competitive globally. The Chicago region, as a global city, needs research facilities like these.

But what about the local jobs and the greater impact on nearby suburbs? Several researchers, including Michael Ebner, have suggested that Fermilab played a crucial role in the development of the area. This 2006 overview of Naperville in Chicago sums up this perspective:

With the creation in 1946 of Argonne National Laboratory (near Lemont, about 15 miles southeast of Naperville) and the establishment, in 1967, of the National Accelerator Laboratory-now called Fermilab-in Batavia (about 15 miles northwest of town), Naperville was on its way to becoming “Chicago’s Technoburb,” as Lake Forest College history professor Michael Ebner later dubbed it. Bell Labs, Amoco, Nalco Chemical, NI-Gas, and Miles Laboratories were among the corporations that set up facilities in Naperville during the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s.

In particular, Ebner argues that this facility plus Argonne National Laboratory meant that scientists and other staff moved to Naperville and then pushed for better schools. While Naperville was still relatively small in the 1950s and 1960s, this influx of educated residents gave the city a world-class educational system, helping to contribute to Naperville’s later growth. Here is one of the outcomes that could be tied to this from the Naperville District #203 website:

In the Third International Mathematics and Science Study-Repeat (1999 TIMSS-R), District 203 eighth graders achieved the highest score in science and sixth highest in mathematics among the 38 participating nations and consortiums worldwide.

I am somewhat skeptical of this argument. One, I’ve never seen hard figures that show how many Fermilab or Argonne researchers actually settled in Naperville. If these researchers also lived in other communities, did their school districts experience the same changes? Two, I haven’t seen evidence that these people directly influenced school changes in the community. Third, I would argue that the 1964 announcement that Bell Laboratories was locating a facility just north of Naperville was much more consequential in understanding Naperville’s growth.

Additionally, Fermilab has often been included in promotional materials as part of the Illinois Technology Research Corridor, providing the research and development foundation to the many notable corporations that have located along I-88 between Oak Brook and Aurora. This article from summer 2011 briefly recognized the impact of the corridor:

While the top-five states were unchanged from 2010, rankings 6 to 10 saw a few surprise movers. Illinois gained 8 spots (14/6) from last year, bumping Pennsylvania down to 7th place. What happened?

As it turns out, Illinois’ improvement is the result of the amount of scientific grant money awarded to the state — $185 million to be exact — from the National Science Foundation to the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign.

While many know the state for politics and sports, Illinois’ Technology and Research Corridor is a major scientific hub in northeastern Illinois, linking intellectual capital and corporate innovation.

Big name companies such as Motorola Solutions and Mobility, Boeing, and Telephone and Data Systems spacer among others are headquartered in Illinois in large part to benefit from the concentration of technical expertise.

I assume the state of Illinois, the city of Chicago, DuPage County, and nearby suburbs would like Fermilab to continue to be scientifically relevant as this brings in federal money, jobs, businesses, and educated residents. Whether the transition Fermilab makes to new research areas also includes these benefits for nearby communities remains to be seen.

Schaumburg’s rise due to relocation of Pure Oil headquarters in 1958

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Schaumburg may be well-known for Woodfield Mall but the Chicago suburb was helped on the path to becoming an edge city (see Joel Garreau’s 1991 book) when Pure Oil relocated from downtown Chicago to fields near Schaumburg in the late 1950s:

Frandsen knows it all started nearly 15 years earlier with the construction of the Pure Oil building on the opposite side of Golf Road — the same building that’s now Roosevelt University’s Schaumburg campus…

Though a corporation’s move from the city to the suburbs is a scenario that’s been repeated many times since, one difficulty at the time was establishing a fair and true price for land that had previously been purely agricultural, Frandsen said.

Along with the company’s move came its employees’ relocation to the suburbs as well. Frandsen and his growing family moved to Arlington Heights, one of the nearest residential areas to the office site which was then in unincorporated Palatine Township.

Unlike today, when the one-story building crouches behind a taller strip mall to the south and IKEA to the north, Pure Oil’s headquarters sat like an island among the fields that continued to be leased to farmers.

It is critical to remember that the post-World War II suburbanization boom in the United States wasn’t just about people moving to the suburbs: many businesses relocated as well. Businesses moved for a variety of reasons including being closer to employees, finding cheaper land and lower taxes, wanting to have more “campus-like” developments, and being closer to the homes of executives.

If Pure Oil really did help kickstart the corporate boom in Schaumburg, this story doesn’t sound too different than that of Naperville where the opening of a Bell Labs facility in the mid 1960s along the relatively new East-West Tollway led to a number of other firms also locating nearby. Both Pure Oil and Bell Labs were originally outside of municipal boundaries and were eventually brought into city limits through annexation. Both Schaumburg and Naperville were already communities prior to the coming of these firms and the arrival of new kinds of businesses pushed community leaders to pursue new opportunities. This shift toward office space and white-collar jobs transformed both suburbs.

Naperville, Aurora mayors among those who voted for Illinois toll increase

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Amidst news that Illinois tollway directors voted today to raise tolls for a $12 billion capital project (see my earlier thoughts here), I noticed that Naperville Mayor George Pradel is involved:

But a majority of Illinois State Toll Highway Authority leaders said the move is crucial to repair existing roads and build some new ambitious projects such as the long-delayed Elgin-O’Hare Expressway extension into O’Hare International Airport and a western bypass road around the airport. The capital plan will create about 120,000 permanent jobs and ease congestion, officials said.

“My heart goes out to those going through tough times and that have lost jobs. One side effect of this is that it will enhance the economy in northern Illinois over 15 years,” said Naperville Mayor and tollway director George Pradel, who voted for the toll increase.

The decision didn’t come quietly — one board director called the move too hasty and proposed a scaled-back version.

Director Bill Morris of Grayslake, the only dissenter in today’s vote, thinks the toll authority could carry out a 10-year capital plan with a 15-cent increase at a 40-cent toll plaza now with more hikes expected later.

You can see the profiles of the Illinois Tollway Board of Directors here. Having never looked at these profiles, I was intrigued: Pradel is joined by the current mayor of Aurora as well as well a number of businessmen and two female public servants (one from education, one from Cook County government). On the whole, it seems like the directors bought into the economic development argument: good tollways, whether that means improved roadways or new roadways, will help northeastern Illinois prosper.

But looking at the backgrounds of this group, I wonder how many also were influenced by how better roadways might help their community or business interests. While this is not necessarily bad – indeed, northeastern Illinois needs businesses and jobs – it is a different perspective than the common driver might have. (And since this is Illinois, I assume there is some political process behind this board. Still, no “citizen” members?) Take Mayor Pradel: was his vote solely for northeastern Illinois and/or is this quite beneficial for Naperville? The regional argument is interesting (and I’m sure the job and economic estimates could be debated) but I would be interested in hearing about how local interests affected this vote.

St. Charles the #1 city according to Family Circle

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Chicago’s western suburbs have received awards in the past. For example, Wheaton was named an All-American city in 1968 and in the 2000s, Naperville was named a top 5 community several times by Money. Now St. Charles, roughly 35 miles west of Chicago, can join the party:

After hearing St. Charles had been named the No. 1 city in the country to raise a family by Family Circle magazine, Ray Ochromowicz said he just wanted to throw his hands in the air…

St. Charles was the only city in the state that made Family Circle’s list.

The magazine chose St. Charles for its “friendly neighborhoods, innovative schools and beautiful parks” according to a news release. The conditions considered were “affordable housing, good neighbors, green spaces, strong public school systems and giving spirits.”…

To get to No. 1, Family Circle selected 2,500 cities and towns with populations between 15,000 and 150,000. It narrowed the list to 1,000, and each town had to have a median income between $55,000 and $95,000. After being graded on criteria, the 10 winners were chosen to be featured in Family Circle, which publishes 15 times a year and has 20 million readers.

See Family Circle‘s top 10 list here. The description of St. Charles is what you would expect from such awards: it has good schools, nice but affordable homes, and there is “community spirit.” (I wonder if it has any problems…)

Based on what other suburban communities have done with these awards, here is what we can expect: St. Charles will feature this award for years and civic leaders can show “proof” of the greatness of their community. Family Circle may not be a big name magazine but it has a monthly circulation of 3.8 million and it appeals to families, exactly the kind of people a place like St. Charles might hope to attract.

Of course, these lists are affected by their criteria. For this Family Circle list, why limit incomes to between $55,000 and $95,000 or set the lower population limit at 15,000? There are certain value judgments present here that might reflect what might motivate a typical American suburban adult to live in a certain community but they might not exactly fit the bill.

The recent fate of suburban “lifestyle centers”

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In sprawling suburbia, there can often be a lack of central spaces where people come together. One recent solution proposed by developers is to build “lifestyle centers,” basically walkable outdoor shopping areas where people can park and spend a day. Here is an update on how these facilities have fared in recent years:

All forms of real estate were punished by the financial crisis, but among the hardest hit was the category that includes the Arboretum. Known as lifestyle centers, they are upscale suburban and exurban developments fashioned as instant downtowns, replete with lush landscaping, communal gathering spaces and a faux Main Street vibe. Eschewing traditional anchors and recession-proof tenants such as grocery stores, the centers promote traffic-building events such as wine tasting, concerts and exhibitions.

Nationally, lifestyle vacancy rates grew faster than any other retail segment, and rents declined the most, an average of $7.38 per square foot, during the last three years, according to CoStar…

Across the Chicago market, shopping center vacancy rates have made slow progress, dropping to 8.6 percent in the first quarter from a high of 9 percent last year, according to the CoStar Retail Report. In 2007, prerecession vacancy rates were below 7 percent…

The lifestyle center blueprint is generally credited to Poag & McEwen, a Tennessee-based developer that pioneered the concept outside Memphis in 1987. The firm has since built more than a dozen centers nationwide, including the north suburban Deer Park Town Center, which opened in 2000 as the area’s first…

I’ve been to a few of these facilities in the Chicago area and the experience is fascinating . I haven’t seen any sociological research on these relatively new spaces but here are some interesting facets:

1. This article suggests these centers can be “instant downtowns.” It would be interesting to see whether these facilities are typically built in places that already have downtowns (so they are competition or supplementary if the community is quite large, like the center at the northwest corner of Route 59 and 95th Street in Naperville) versus being built in suburban communities that never had downtowns (so these facilities are more like replacements). I would also imagine that many suburbanites also have a different image of downtown, more similar to a “Main Street” commonly found in small towns (and enshrined at Disneyworld). But perhaps “a faux Main Street vibe” is good enough for suburbanites. What would it take for one of these facilities to really catch on in a suburban community and replicate some of the functions of a downtown?

2. Can these really be “public spaces”? Do people actually come here regularly to sit and interact with others or are they more like outdoor shopping malls? It seems like there needs to be a critical mass of people who would visit these facilities and would also commit to them before they would be more than shopping malls. These places are a long way from the neighborhood life suggested by people like Jane Jacobs in The Death and Life of Great American Cities. (I also wonder how much of these facilities are actually private property versus public property.)

3. How many of these facilities are accessible by anything other than cars? It is one thing to push New Urbanist concepts (walkability, denser spaces, more traditional architecture) but another to plop New Urbanist designs in the middle of typical auto-centric communities.

4. What sort of lifestyles are promoted by such centers? It is likely the typical American consumerism of middle and upper-class suburbia that one can find elsewhere with perhaps a few events or activities might to provide a touch of color and attract people (wine tastings, exhibitions, etc.).

5. Is an investment in a facility like this better than an investment in strip malls or more conventional shopping centers? I imagine communities might find them more visually attractive but do they generate more sales tax revenue?

The current state of Zipcar

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The Infrastructurist provides a quick overview of the current state of Zipcar. Some of the things you should know:

Zipcar went public last week, and how. On its first day of trading, the company raised $174.3 million and finished up 56 percent. All told, Zipcar sold 9.7 million shares of stock at $18 a pop and earned itself a market value of $1.21 billion, according to Bloomberg…

The 11-year-old company currently operates in 14 cities — 12 in the United States, plus Vancouver and London — and 230 college campuses. Its fleet stands at around 8,000 cars, and its membership at 560,000.

Robin Chase, the company’s founder, has been known to say: “Infrastructure is destiny.” The business world is more concerned with whether profits are destiny. So far, for Zipcar, they have not been. Last year the company generated about $186 million in revenue but still posted a net loss of roughly $14 million…

Zipcar’s biggest problem, writes the Wall Street Journal, may be growing competition from traditional car rental companies…

In the end Zipcar’s success may hinge on how transportation evolves in the near future.

This overview is pitched as a look at whether Zipcar is “a good investment.” This would be the business angle: the company has not turned a profit even as it seems like investors are at least somewhat confident that they could make some money down the road.

But there are plenty of other questions to ask (the answers to these questions would have an impact on the business side but are more interesting to me): is this company on to something regarding infrastructure and the use of cars? In recent months, there is some data to suggest Americans want to live in more walkable environments (which could presumably lead to less interest in owning a vehicle). Is this model sustainable even in these cities, let alone less dense cities? It would be interesting to see Zipcar usage data regarding less urban college settings (like the Zipcars at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois – currently, there is a Toyota Matrix and Toyota Prius available on campus) compared to the big cities. Ultimately, is a car-sharing model the end goal or a middle step between gasoline powered vehicles and vehicles of the future that will be powered by something cleaner and cheaper?

Aurora now second largest city in Illinois

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The population growth in the Chicago suburbs has shifted from Naperville (in the 1980s and 1990s) to communities further west and south. In particular, Aurora grew during the 2000s and is now Illinois’ second largest city:

[T]he Alperins are among the nearly 55,000 new residents since 2000 who helped Aurora boost its population to 197,899 and officially eclipse Rockford as Illinois’ second-largest city, according to the recently released 2010 U.S. census figures.

Aurora’s 54,909 jump was the largest among Illinois cities. Its percentage increase of 38.4 percent was just behind top-ranked Joliet, which grew at a 38.8 percent pace to 147,433 and beat out Naperville as Illinois’ fourth-largest community.

The growth comes as Aurora makes strides resurrecting what had become a struggling downtown and boasts of statistics that show the city’s major crime rate is at its lowest in more than three decades. The physical size of the city also has grown to accommodate more people. Aurora has three times as many square miles as it had four decades ago.

There are several reasons that the community has grown including a growing Hispanic population and open land in a growing region of the Chicago suburbs. But the city has also dramatically expanded in size:

Aurora, meanwhile, now covers 46 square miles compared with 35 in 1990 and 15 in 1970. It sprawls through four counties, six school districts and seven townships. But like Naperville in the last decade, the city could eventually be boxed in by neighbors, Greene said. And there’s also no guarantee that brisk growth from the 1990s through part of the 2000s will repeat when the economy improves.

The explanation for why Aurora is growing is very similar to what led to Naperville’s growth between 1960 and 2000: it is located near highways, it has a number of businesses, and there is plenty of room to expand and the city has annexed a lot of land. But as Naperville discovered, the growth only goes on for so long: eventually, the land runs out and then Aurora will become a different kind of place. As the end of the article notes, the long-term course of the city will likely include denser development near the center of the city.

At the same time, Naperville and Aurora’s growth are not quite the same: Naperville has long had a wealthier profile compared to Aurora’s status as an industrial satellite city (named as such in this 1915 work).  During the 1980s and 1990s, Naperville’s growth was quite unusual: Naperville was classified as the only boomburb outside of the South or West during the last two decades of the twentieth century. Naperville is quite well-off for a large community, has a history of high-tech companies dating back to the mid-1960s, has very low crime and poverty rates, and has a vibrant and popular downtown.

It will be interesting to watch in the coming years how Aurora, Joliet, Plainfield, and other suburbs in the southwest suburbs continue to grow.