Tag Archives: Wheaton

Plans for purchase of Wheaton Grand Theater; hope for larger economic impact

Posted on by

Many older American downtowns are looking for ways to bring in new business and revenues. One way to achieve this is to pursue entertainment opportunities. Here is how this is currently playing out in Wheaton, Illinois where there is a perspective buyer for the Wheaton Theater:

Downtown property owner and lifelong Wheaton resident Jim Atten said he has “verbally agreed” to buy the theater, constructed in 1925, from Elmhurst-based Suburban Bank and Trust.

“It’s going to take a while to do, but our plan is to turn it into a performing arts and movie theater,” Atten said…

Atten said, if the purchase goes through, an extensive fundraising effort will be launched to make a dent in the necessary repairs and remodeling in the building, which he estimated could be about $5 million…

The theater closed in the 1990s and after an unsuccessful attempt by the Wheaton Grand Theater Corp. to revive it by hosting concerts, the deed was given up to the bank after coming up short on a loan payment.

Last year, Wheaton voters rejected a proposal to let the city use $150,000 in public funds each year to renovate the building…

Still, [Wheaton mayor] Gresk said the expected purchase is a “wonderful, huge first step.”

We’ll see how this moves forward. The benefits of a theater for a smaller downtown could be large: theaters can generate money themselves but can also attract other business as theater goers eat and shop nearby, festivals could make use of the space (think film, music, art, and theater festivals), and this building could serve as an example of how to effectively remodel and utilize older spaces. Smaller downtowns need spaces like this to succeed, partly to help provide energy and people for all of the downtown but also to make good use of storefront space that might be difficult to fill with other uses.

Property values, city finances, and downtown development: controversy over approved senior housing in downtown Wheaton

Posted on by

New development projects in already-developed suburban areas can attract controversy. Here is an example from downtown Wheaton, Illinois: the city council just approved a senior housing project but some of the neighbors are not happy with the change to the site and there are some questions about funding and whether the city will be left with a bill.

The council voted 4-3 this week to allow construction of a 167-unit facility on a site once slated for luxury condominiums as part of the Courthouse Square complex at the corner of Naperville Road and Willow Avenue…

The approval came after nine planning and zoning board meetings totaling more than 24 hours with testimony from experts, opponents and supporters. In a nearly unanimous vote in August, that board recommended the council deny the zoning plans.

The original proposal for the complex, supported by the council in 2004, called for a mix of townhouses and condos. But developers cited the housing market crash when they pulled the plug on what were supposed to be the second and third midrise buildings. Northfield-based Focus Development Inc. and West Chicago-based Airhart Construction Corp. partnered on the project.

The saga continued when developers asked to amend the plan to allow senior housing, angering some Courthouse Square residents who argued they were promised a strictly residential community when they bought their units.

I’m not sure how this will all play out in court and whether the current residents have a case against the developers. However, here are a few thoughts about this:

1. Senior citizen housing would be helpful in Wheaton. As a more mature community that is relatively wealthy, there are relatively less places in the community for seniors to live in affordable housing. Indeed, when communities like Wheaton do talk about affordable, they tend to be talking about seniors and young people who would like to be in the community but don’t have the resources due to their stage in life to remain.

2. Wheaton has been on a longer program of introducing more housing into the downtown, starting with the condominiums built in the early 1990s across the street from the downtown train station. While higher-end housing might bring in more revenue and people who have more spending power to spread around the downtown, having some development in this space rather than none might be preferable.

3. Like in many suburban debates about development, it sounds like this is partly (mainly?) about property values. The existing residents don’t want their higher-end units to suffer because senior-citizen housing is built nearby instead of other high end units. This could be one of those situations where it would help to take a bigger view: Wheaton would like to offer more affordable housing for seniors and this land is available so perhaps property values can’t or shouldn’t be the overriding concern here.

4. More than ever because of the economic crisis, revenues matter in these situations. Some are concerned that the city, and therefore, taxpayers, might be on the hook if the development doesn’t work out in a certain way. This would be a strike against downtown redevelopment plans; the goal is to generate new revenues, property and sales taxes, not saddle the municipality with new costs.

Wheaton to get new downtown overpass – for pedestrians

Posted on by

The City of Wheaton has long looked into the possibility of an overpass in or near the downtown so that traffic could avoid the frequent trains on the Union Pacific (formerly Chicago & Northwestern) tracks. It looks like Wheaton is going to pursue an overpass in the next year, but only for pedestrians:

In 2010, Metra officials had announced plans for the proposed pedestrian overpass, as part of more than $3 million worth of improvements that Metra and the Union Pacific Railroad had drawn up for the Wheaton depot. The work also was to include moving the Wheaton station’s platforms entirely west of West Street.The project had been set to be completed in 2011 but hit a snag, Metra officials said, after complications related to gaining a needed easement from a private landowner on the south side of the tracks. Without that easement, the work could not proceed, said Metra spokesman Michael Gillis…

The pedestrian overpass would be the first of its kind at Wheaton’s Metra station. The College Avenue station, a mile or so east, has a pedestrian tunnel, but Wheaton Metra commuters have no easily available bypass to get from one side of the tracks to the other.

Gillis said the pedestrian overpass would be constructed between 530 and 550 feet west of the West Street rail crossing.

It appears this was first announced in the Metra “On the Bi-Level” newsletter for the UP West line March 2009. I’ll be curious to see how this overpass looks and how it fits in with the surrounding area.

This will be helpful at the downtown commuter train station. However, it doesn’t help with a vehicular traffic and congestion issue in Wheaton: getting over the railroad tracks when going north-south. The bridge on Manchester Road is helpful but it requires going out of the way and it not right along the Gary Avenue/Main Street/Naperville Road corridor.

My take on why such a vehicular overpass has not been built is that it would change the historic downtown too much. Proposals made in the past would have required severely altering the Main Street/Front Street intersection, home to some of downtown Wheaton’s oldest buildings. Better options may have included extending Naperville Road across the tracks but this runs into the Courthouse area, the library, and a residential neighborhood and the Gary Avenue corridor is more residential. In the end, Wheaton may just have to live with trains stopping traffic: those same trains gave the community a reason for existing as Wheaton was initially founded around the then Galena & Chicago Union railroad tracks in the 1850s.

Poverty in Wheaton on PBS NewsHour

Posted on by

In order to illustrate the rising number of people in poverty, PBS NewsHour went to Wheaton, Illinois.

PBS NewsHour: Suburb in Wealthy Illinois County Sees Unexpected Rise in Poverty

Some interesting material here including a look at local food banks, how middle-class people can end up in poverty, and how federal resources go more to urban areas than suburban areas. With the increase in the poor population in the suburbs and the knowledge that many suburbs are unprepared to handle this, this could change the image of and experience in the American suburbs for years to come.

While this is clearly a national issue, there hasn’t been much public discussion of this in Wheaton. Instead, I have heard more about high taxes, the government taking and wasting too much money, and the need to balance municipal budgets. I wonder how the City of Wheaton and others in the community would answer these questions:

1. Are there local resources to deal with this? Either way, should there be?

2. Is it a problem that suburban communities should help solve (with money, time, services, etc.) or is it someone else’s concern (the state, the federal government, private agencies, churches, etc.)?

3. Is this a problem for Wheaton’s image?

Designer parking garages in Miami

Posted on by

Parking garages tend not to have good reputations as they are often functional blocks of concrete that are measured by how many cars they can fit. But, Miami apparently has a number of “designer” garages including a proposed parking elevator for a new high-rise:

The $560 million Jetsonesque tower will rise in Sunny Isles Beach as part of a collaboration between Germany-based Porsche Design Group and a local developer, Gil Dezer. It likely will be the world’s first condominium complex with elevators that will take residents directly to their units while they are sitting in their cars…

Here is how it will work: After the resident pulls over and switches off the engine, a robotic arm that works much like an automatic plank will scoop up the car and put it into the elevator. Once at the desired floor, the same robotic arm will park the car, leaving the resident nearly in front of his front door. Voila, home!

The glass elevators will give residents and their guests unparalleled views of the city or of the ocean during their high-speed ride, expected to last 45 to 90 seconds…

The car elevators are the latest twist on Miami Beach’s burgeoning passion for designer parking garages. The highly acclaimed 1111 Lincoln Road designed by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron opened in 2009; also planned are garages by London architect Zaha Hadid, Mexico’s Enrique Norten and Miami’s own Arquitechonica.

Being able to live in a luxury condo that is greatly enhanced by parking right outside of your door sounds like a uniquely American prize. This is another reminder how American culture is dominated by the automobile.

At the same time, this could also be seen as an architectural or design issue: how can one successfully design parking garages so they are aesthetically pleasing? While these garages in Miami might be for more luxurious residences, there are other options. One option that seems to be growing in popularity is underground garages. While this is great in dense urban spaces where valuable land can’t be wasted on a separate parking structure, it can also be found in denser suburban developments where the goal is to allow condo or townhome owners to park directly below their units and to keep the garage out of sight. After all, large houses with prominent garages may be called “snout houses” in reference to the overarching emphasis on where the garage is going to be parked.

This reminds me of one of the parking decks in Naperville. The Van Buren structure features a stained glass window memorializing the “Cars of the Century.” Also, Wheaton has done a nice job of hiding their downtown garage behind more traditional looking structures.

Residents in Chicago suburb of Palatine oppose proposed Starbucks

Posted on by

For suburban communities, the arrival of a Starbucks can be seen as a sign that the suburb has the ability to attract national stores. But some residents in suburban Palatine are opposed to a proposed Starbucks:

The Palatine village council Monday referred the proposal back to the Zoning Board of Appeals on the village attorney’s advice so that it can review the results of a traffic study despite its earlier unanimous vote to recommend the project. The postponement also grants a request by McDonald’s Corp., which operates an adjacent restaurant, the opportunity to look the study over.

The Starbucks would make up one of three tenant spaces to be built on a vacant lot between the fast-food restaurant and Harris Bank on Northwest Highway near Smith Road. Charley’s Grilled Subs would fill the second space with the third still undetermined.

A couple dozen residents attended the council meeting to oppose the national coffee chain, which they believe will ultimately force nearby Norma’s Coffee Corner to close.

“We as a town should embrace diversity, and I would hate to see Palatine become a national franchise town if there are no mom-and-pops around,” Roman Golash of Palatine said.

Four things strike me about this story:

1. Traffic is a common complaint in NIMBY cases. However, this Starbucks would be located near several other chain/strip mall type businesses on an already busy road. Is Starbucks the problem or the type of development that is already there?

2. The residents seem interested in buying local and Starbucks is one of those companies, perhaps along with Walmart, Walgreens, and others, that represent sprawl and big box stores. At the same time, as far as I can tell from Google Maps, Norma’s is also in a strip mall. So are these residents opposed to all national stores in town? Why is Starbucks singled out in particular? This isn’t quite the battle of a long-time downtown business versus the big national chain. While national stores may not be local businesses (unless they are franchises), they can still bring in tax revenue.

3. Diversity equals having a mix of national and local businesses? This doesn’t sound like the traditional definition of diversity which is typically associated with race and perhaps social class. I wonder if suburbanites use these altered definitions of diversity because they really think that racial or class diversity is not really desirable but they think people like to hear about diversity. (To be fair: Palatine is 76.9% white, 10.3% Asian, and 18% Latino.)

4. Some Chicago suburbs are interested in attracting Starbucks and similar businesses to their downtowns in order to bring in more people. For example, the Starbucks that opened in downtown Wheaton in the late 1990s was seen as a sign that Wheaton’s downtown was an important shopping area (and had a wealthy enough demographic to support such a business).

“Occupying Naperville 24/7 on Facebook” and “Saturday[s] at 10 AM”

Posted on by

The Chicago Sun-Times has another report on the Occupy Naperville efforts of this past Saturday. While there are more quotes from the participants than the Chicago Tribune report, the last quote in particular intrigues me:

“We’re going to be occupying Naperville 24/7 on Facebook,” Alesch said. “And we’ll be here Saturday at 10 a.m.”

Several thoughts:

1. Is Occupy Naperville on Facebook really the same kind of protest? See the Facebook page here. Apparently, no one is protesting around-the-clock but there is a sign-making operation in conservative downtown Wheaton.

2. Is the reason this group is only gathering on Saturdays at 10 AM versus an around the clock protest like in New York City because: (1) there are not enough protestors to go around-the-clock (2) they are suburbanites who can’t be there all the time (3) Naperville wouldn’t allow this or there isn’t space for it (imagine if the Riverwalk became the site – what might the city do?)?

Wheaton’s Ale Fest: a conservative image and helping the downtown

Posted on by

Wheaton has been a politically and religiously conservative community from its early day. Therefore, Ale Fest, a festival that might be considered normal for other suburban communities, still draws attention:

And while an ale fest might not be news in other communities, it raises eyebrows in Wheaton, which has a large evangelical Christian population and prohibited the sale of alcoholic beverages from 1887 until 1985.

Wheaton Ale Fest, which will take place on Front Street from 1 to 5 p.m. on Saturday, will feature more than 100 styles of beers from craft brewers around the nation. The event, which is being hosted by the Wheaton Park District in conjunction with the Downtown Wheaton Association and the Wheaton Chamber of Commerce to bring more visitors to downtown Wheaton’s shops and restaurants, also will allow visitors to vote for their favorite Illinois craft beer…

Looking back, Wheaton Mayor Mike Gresk called the gradual loosening of alcohol restrictions – and the community’s acceptance of them – “typical of Wheaton,” which was not a community that wanted “to go into this too fast.”

“If you look at our history, this is quite a stunning change from what we did 30 years ago, but there are residents who have moved here since 1985 for whom the whole idea of the city’s past prohibition would be news,” Gresk said. “As a city, we’ve had a very gradual and measured response, and the city has eased itself and its population into this mindset. We police it very closely and watch to make sure there are no underage sales.”

Gresk noted that while “some longtime residents might raise an eyebrow” at the notion of an ale fest, he believes the event is a great way to showcase Wheaton’s many businesses.

Two points come to mind:

1. Wheaton’s image is long-standing and has staying power. Even though liquor sales have been allowed for over 25 years, some people still think of Wheaton as dry. While not all suburbs have such a consistent character over time, Wheaton does. This could be good and bad: some people like consistency (what you see is what you will get) while others might want more to do and more to happen (compare downtown Wheaton to downtown Naperville).

2. The push to allow liquor sales in the mid 1980s and the reason for having Ale Fest today sound about the same: alcohol sales can help bring people into town and boost tax revenue. In the mid 1980s, the argument was made that restaurants would not be interested in locating in downtown Wheaton if they could sell liquor. Today, Mayor Gresk also says the festival is “basically good for our downtown.” The festival may not exactly fit with Wheaton’s image but many suburbs are looking for ways to improve their business climate, boost tax revenues, and bring more people into their downtown.

Don’t romanticize the loss of bookstores: rue the loss of tax dollars and jobs

Posted on by

One response to the closing of bookstores is to lament the loss of a place to browse for books and drink coffee. But another reason to rue the loss of these stores is the loss of tax dollars and jobs. Here is how this plays out in Wheaton:

The eventual closure of Borders books will have an impact on Wheaton in terms of lost sales tax revenue and jobs, said Jim Kozik, the director of planning for the city. And replacing a large retailer isn’t easy in times like these…

Locally he said Borders absence will mean a loss of jobs, a loss of tax revenue for the city and a loss of lease income for the management company that runs the shopping plaza at Butterfield and Naperville roads. But he said the amount of revenue the city will lose is hard to quantify because it is not spelled out by state government…

Kozik said the city has had discussions with Anderson’s Bookshop, an independent seller with locations in Downers Grove and Naperville. But ultimately the talks didn’t produce.

With liquidation plans announced for Borders books, Wheaton could face having two large vacant former bookstores – the other being a space in the Town Square shopping plaza formerly occupied by Barnes and Noble. That store closed a few years ago, said Kerry O’Brien of the Wheaton chamber of commerce.

It is little wonder that more states are looking to gather sales taxes off internet sales. The loss of bookstores has an economic impact that is perhaps more important than the cultural and social implications of the loss of a potential “third place.”

This story is also a little more intriguing because it is Wheaton, a community that is fairly educated and yet has lost two big chain bookstores. If they can’t survive in Wheaton, where else can they survive? (I wonder how the Barnes & Noble in downtown Naperville is viewed.) In general, the Chicago suburbs are lacking in independent bookstores, a type of business that might mark a more educated demographic.

St. Charles the #1 city according to Family Circle

Posted on by

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.