Back in the early 1970s, Oak Park apprehensively faced the prospect of change.
The predominantly white community was experiencing an influx of blacks from Chicago`s South Austin neighborhood, bordering the suburb on the east.
Some people feared racial diversity would change the community`s character, village officials said.
But those fears did not materialize to a significant degree because the village took measures to facilitate integration and promote a strong business community. Among those measures were the Oak Park Housing Center, formed in 1972 to enhance residential integration, and the Oak Park Development Corp., organized two years later to boost business and attract development.
”Although the two problems (of achieving a racial mix and boosting economic development) need to be solved by two types of people, you are still dealing with a parallel, and not separate issues,” said Sara Bode, former village president.
Roberta Raymond, executive director of the housing center, agreed. ”I feel the relationship between housing and economic development is a close one,” she said. ”The way a neighborhood is perceived often depends on the condition of its retail businesses. And even some apartment buildings have stores on the ground floor.”
Raymond is one of the development corporation`s 19 board members.
Oak Park has not solved all of its economic problems. But since the development corporation went to work in 1974, development, usually in the form of rehabilitation and expansion of existing buildings, has surged forward.
Property values also are on the rise, said Richard Gloor, a development corporation board member and owner of Gloor Realty Co. in River Forest.
”There have been significant changes since `74 and `75 when residential housing values were going down,” Gloor said. ”An increase in property prices began in `76, and, except for the recession of the early 1980s, they have been moving up better than average.”
The Oak Park Development Corp. was a pioneer in the concept of delegating the operation of economic development programs to the private sector. In the late 1970s, when the economy began a downturn nationally, a number of municipalities statewide adopted the concept. Suburbs with similar
organizations include Evanston, Des Plaines and Joliet.
Perceiving a fear among business owners of locating in Oak Park, village officials in 1973 considered creating an economic development department within the village government, said Arthur Replogle, president of the development corporation.
”We were a built-up town with no cornfields waiting for development,”
said Lee Ellis, who was village manager in the early 1970s and now is senior vice president for business and finance at Northwestern University in Evanston. ”There was concern for our tax base, and we needed somebody to beat the bushes and channel people to prospective spots.”
Business leaders were consulted, and from those consultations came a recommendation that an economic development program be operated by the private sector. Primary proponents of that concept were two former bank presidents:
Raymond O`Keefe of the First Bank of Oak Park and Donald Sandro of Oak Park Trust & Savings Bank.
”The business people thought that developers would prefer to deal with other business people rather than government officials,” Replogle said.
”A developer almost always finds himself in a semiadversarial relationship with government,” Ellis added. ”The business community provides a more friendly point of contact.”
The nonprofit corporation was set up under a contract with the village, which funds half of its operating budget and designates funds from federal community development grants as loan guarantees. The remainder of the corporation`s operating budget, which has grown from about $60,000 in 1974 to $95,000 in 1985, is funded from contributions by 14 businesses whose representatives serve on the corporation`s board. The corporation,
headquartered in the Avenue Bank & Trust Co. building, 104 N. Oak Park Ave., has a paid staff of three.
Functions of the corporation include advertising and contacting prospective developers, assisting negotiations between property owners and buyers, testifying at zoning or plan commission hearings and recommending projects to the village for the sale of industrial revenue bonds to help finance development.
Since 1979, the corporation has operated a low-interest loan program for commercial property owners and tenants to rehab their premises. The loans are available at six participating Oak Park financial institutions, which can offer low interest rates because community development funds are available to insure against default.
So far, there has not been any defaults on 37 loans totaling about $3.5 million.
The participating financial institutions are the First Bank of Oak Park, Suburban Trust & Savings Bank, Great American Federal Savings, St. Paul Federal Bank for Savings, Avenue Bank & Trust Co. and Oak Park Trust & Savings Bank.
One of those loans was put to use by Willis Johnson, owner of the Lake Theater, 1020 Lake St., who remodeled the theater and divided its single-screen auditorium into three smaller auditoriums.
”Without the development corporation, I wouldn`t have been able to do it,” Johnson said. ”With three screens, I can show a variety of films and run some movies I would otherwise not be able to run.”
Johnson restored the theater`s original Art Deco design in addition to such mundane improvements as installing a new roof and heating and air conditioning systems. After about six months of construction, the theater reopened on Nov. 27.
Rehabbing and restoring buildings of architectural significance has been encouraged by the corporation since it came into existence.
In fact, its first project was the preservation of the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio, which has been designated a National Historic Landmark.
The corporation bought the building, at 951 Chicago Ave., in 1974 for $165,000 that was borrowed from participating banks. The National Trust for Historic Preservation offered to match $100,000 if the corporation could raise that amount in three years. The money was raised through contributions in one year, and the banks were paid off. The National Trust took title to the building, and a local foundation was set up to oversee restoration, which is scheduled for completion in June. The site is a major attraction for about 40,000 tourists a year.
The corporation`s first development project was Euclid Place, a multifamily housing development built in 1975 on the 500 and 600 blocks of Lake Street.
Other major projects in which the corporation had a hand include Scoville Square, on the southwest corner of Oak Park Avenue and Lake Street, and Park Square, 1100 Lake St., in the Oak Park Mall. Scoville Square, which in its renovated state houses a restaurant, shops and offices, was Gilmore`s department store. Park Square, now a mini-mall of shops, was the Montgomery Ward store.
The corporation`s development projects have created or retained 637 jobs, Replogle said.
Projects that are underway include 100 Forest Pl., a rental housing development on the southeast corner of Lake Street and Forest Avenue, and Prairie Court, another rental building to be built on the former village hall site at the southeast corner of Lake Street and Euclid Avenue.
The corporation`s plans include enticing a major hotel to the village, encouraging development on the east side of the village and working with Chicago`s Austin neighborhood to promote development. Cindy Michul, one of the corporation`s three staff members, was hired recently to concentrate on the village`s eastern side.
One of her plans for the area is to create an ”incubator,” which is an old building converted to offices for beginning small businesses.
The corporation also expects to initiate a low-interest loan program for property purchase. So far, $2.5 million has been pledged to the program by local financial institutions.
Federal cutbacks in community development funds may be an obstacle for the corporation in the future. Community development funds for the entire village were reduced to $1.2 million this year from $1.8 million in 1985. But the lesser amount has not affected the corporation because some of its early loans are amortizing and building surplus funds in the loan program, Replogle said.
”Cutbacks could have a long-term effect on development in the village,” said Greg Mihalic, director of community development. ”But so far, we`re surviving all right.”
