Orland Park and Frankfort are embracing the future while treasuring the past.
The two are in a booming area along Interstate Highway 80 and U.S. Highway 45. Both are former farm communities that are attracting large, upscale housing developments and new businesses and industries amid the silos and stretches of plowed fields.
Planners in both villages have visions of growth in this corner of Cook County and the adjacent northern section of Will County. Despite eagerness to continue the boom, however, leaders in both communities also look for ways to preserve their pioneer past.
In Frankfort, turn-of-the-century shops and a history museum bring character to the downtown. The village centerpiece is an elevator tower from a former grainery.
In Orland Park, townspeople have carefully reassembled two log cabins built by their forebearers. They also are working to transform the home of a founding family into a showplace of life before shopping malls and
expressways.
This respect for heritage is an important guiding principal in the towns` development philosophies, planners say.
Orland Park was incorporated in 1892 through the work of John Humphrey, one of the first people to live in the area. Until then, Orland Township was made up of farms and small, unincorporated communities.
Humphrey was a lawyer and state senator who served as mayor from the time of the town`s incorporation until his death in 1914. His house is being restored by the Orland Historical Society.
Humphrey commuted to offices in Chicago. He organized the community because a railroad company was about to build a line through the area. For years after its incorporation, however, Orland Park remained a largely rural community with settlers from German and English backgrounds.
In the 1960s, however, the town began to grow. And in the 1970s, the town`s commercial base was expanded by the construction of a major shopping center, Orland Square, 151st Street and 94th Avenue.
After that the growth accelerated rapidly. The population was 6,391 in 1970 and 23,045 in 1980. Orland Park took a special census in 1989 because it was growing so fast, says Shari Neeley, community development director. That report showed 34,394 people calling Orland Park home.
Industrial growth also came to the village with expansions at the Andrew Corp., an electronic communications equipment firm founded by a family that has supported many community projects.
Someone who has seen much of that growth is William Kacerovskis, who moved to Orland Park in 1958 with his wife, Anne. He is an insurance agent with an office near La Grange Road and 143rd Street, a vantage point from where he has watched the town`s rapid development.
”La Grange Road is so busy now that I have to leave my office by a back way,” he jokes.
The Orland Park he remembers in the 1950s was a town where people knew
”everyone else in town, everyone else in church.
”In fact, when we moved to the community, there was no grocery store, and we had to go to Palos Heights to buy groceries. Things have changed.”
Although there has been a lot of growth, he says, ”it`s been quite orderly. The village fathers have required larger lots, and I think that`s helped keep property values high. The taxes, in my opinion, have not been as high as they could be because of the development in the community.”
Carl Sandburg High School, from which Kacerovskis` four daughters and three sons graduated, was five years old when he moved to the community. Good schools were a reason the family decided to move to Orland Park, he says.
High school students in Orland Park attend one of three high schools operated by Consolidated High School District 230. They are Sandburg; Victor J. Andrew High School in Tinley Park (named for a member of the Andrew family); and Amos Alonzo Stagg High School in Palos Hills.
Elementary students attend classes in Orland Elementary School District 135, which has seven elementary schools and one junior high.
Private schools serving the community include St. Michael`s Catholic School in Orland Park and Southwest Chicago Christian School in Tinley Park, both elementary schools.
The high-quality schools are part of a ”quality of life” the village attempts to preserve amid expansive growth, Mayor Fred Owens says.
”We are interested in maintaining standards. I`ve always thought that this should be the kind of community where a person would be proud to raise a family.
”I see us in the future getting away from so much dependence on commercial development and going more toward quality office buildings and corporate head-quarters,” he says.
Owens praises the work of community groups such as the historical society. Community spirit is enhanced each June in Orland Park with a festival.
Planners hope to create even more of a sense of community with development planned for the next 10 years. They plan to create a town center around the recently completed new village hall on Ravinia Avenue to about 151st Street, Neeley says. The village will seek specialty shops to complement antique shops along Beacon Avenue.
Much of the future expansion will come from new housing developments at the western edge of the village, which stretches to the Will County line, she says.
One development is the Crystal Tree subdivision at 143rd Street and 108th Avenue, which is being built by Corley Development, Northbrook. The project, to be completed in early 1991, will contain 291 town houses and 75 single-family houses.
The village is also helping develop industrial parks in the western part of the community and encouraging more commercial development along U.S. 45 and other areas. The Appleknoll Industrial Park, for example, is being built at 163rd Street and 104th Avenue by Dave O`Malley, Alsip. It will include three buildings with a total of 48,000 square feet for light industry and a 32,000 square foot office building. The project has 22 acres available for development, and is expected to be completed by the end of 1990.
That growth will not jeopardize the community`s open spaces, however, Neeley says. One goal of the village is to protect a feeling of openness in subdivisions by requiring large lots and setting aside land for features such as golf courses and parks, she says.
The village also is working on a policy for preserving wetlands, which are protected by federal regulations, Neeley says.
”This area is full of people watching the birds migrate in the spring,” Neeley says. ”We want to protect that, too.”
Growth also is coming to Frankfort, though at a slower pace than in Orland Park. It was the first of the two communities to be incorporated. Founded in 1855, it officially became a municipality in 1879.
From its founding until well after World War II, the fortunes of Frankfort and its largely German populace rose and fell with the farmers`
welfare.
A history of the community, for instance, notes with sadness the misery brought to the village in the Depression when corn prices fell to 10 cents a bushel. ”The struggle to survive becomes everyone`s prime concern,” observes a booklet published for Frankfort`s 1979 centennial.
Suburban expansion in the metropolitan area reached Frankfort in the 1960s. In that decade the popular Fall Festival, which had its origins in a fall sauerkraut festival, was initiated as a way to celebrate the community`s past.
That interest in community heritage was one of the things that attracted Greg Westray, 32, to Frankfort in 1987. He moved to the community from Clinton, Ill., to open an office of an investment company.
”I was looking for a community to set up an office and was very impressed with Frankfort,” he says. ”I think I was impressed most by the visual stimulus I received from the town, the way the shops reflect the town`s heritage.”
Westray became active in the Frankfort Chamber of Commerce and community activities, and this fall he will be in charge of the Fall Festival, which opens Aug. 31.
”We get 200,000 to 300,000 people in the community for this festival. We have arts and crafts, a parade, a teen dance and a carnival. . . . I think if we ever didn`t have it, we`d still have thousands of people driving into the community looking for the celebration, (because) it`s become such a tradition.”
Frankfort`s small-town character also is preserved by the stability of residential patterns, Mayor Kenneth Biel says.
”I would say that people are generally very neighborly,” he says.
”I`ve been living in the same house for 14 years, and all the people who lived in the neighborhood when I moved there are all the same.
”Everyone who moves out here seems to like it. We have a well-maintained historical district, and well-maintained older homes nearby. These houses usually don`t even go on the market when they`re available. People know by word of mouth that one will be for sale, and that`s the way they`re sold.”
Outside the historic district, which runs along Kansas Street and around the nearby grainery tower, are new subdivisions and industrial parks.
One of the new subdivisions is Butternut Creek, developed by Butternut Creek Realty, Frankfort. The development, at U.S. Highway 30 and Elsner Road, has 50 single-family houses on half-acre lots and is nearly completed.
The village has been annexing land, including the Prestwick subdivision south of town, at Sauk Trail and Harlem Avenue, and another tract to the north, at La Grange and St. Francis Roads. The Prestwick subdivision, which was annexed in December, has 450 single-family houses on 640 acres, and the other tract, which covers 750 acres, is undeveloped.
Two industrial parks, designed to attract warehousing companies and light industrial operations, are being developed. One of these is the Frankfort Airport Industrial Park, Center and Laraway Roads, which was begun in 1989 by the Airport Industrial Park company, Frankfort. It covers 80 acres and is divided into 68 industrial sites. It has 20 businesses so far, including one specializing in ultraviolet light technology and another in airport mail order supplies.
”There are two reasons why a community would encourage economic growth,” Biel says. ”One is to create jobs and the other is to improve the tax base. We`re not a poor community, so we don`t have to be as concerned about creating jobs, but we do need to broaden the tax base.”
Frankfort`s population is about 7,000, according to estimates from the Frankfort Development Corp. The corporation was formed in 1988 as a joint venture of the village and the Chamber of Commerce to guide development and help support the demands of an increasing population.
That population represents a steady growth over the last 10 years: The population in 1980 was 4,400. The growth has brought increased enrollment to the school districts.
Frankfort has two elementary school districts: Frankfort Community Consolidated School District 157C, which has two elementary schools and a junior high; and Summit Hill School District 161, which has four elementary schools, an intermediate school (grades 5 and 6), and a junior high. District 161 serves Frankfort Square, an unincorporated area east of the village.
Frankfort high school students attend Lincoln-Way High School District 210, which has campuses in Frankfort and New Lenox.
