Homeowners on a handful of pretty, woods-lined streets in south suburban Chicago Heights happily live with a kind of municipal identity crisis, paying taxes to Chicago Heights, accepting Chicago Heights fire and police protection – and claiming the mailing addresses of their tonier neighboring towns, Homewood or Flossmoor.
Do they or don`t they live in Chicago Heights? Only the assessor knows for sure.
”I guess it gives you the impression of prominence, or prestige,” said August Bamonti, 61, zoning administrator for the City of Chicago Heights and a lifelong resident.
The mailing-address ploy is not uncommon to new housing developments in many Chicago suburbs, whose developers seek to associate the value-enhancing image of neighboring towns with properties that, but for the distance of a few hundred yards, find themselves in towns with names that might not generate great sales appeal.
Bamonti said no one in Chicago Heights really minds the preference of their western neighbors, who also send their children to Homewood-Flossmoor schools, saying, ”As long as the tax money is coming in here, to each his own.”
But he did agree that if a Chicago Heights house suddenly were picked up and moved to Homewood or Olympia Fields, it would be worth 1 1/2 times its Chicago Heights value ”because of the image or the economic makeup of the community.”
The oddity of addresses in Chicago Heights provides a telling example of the struggle the community has faced in order to prosper, despite its turn-of- the-century manufacturing base, its mostly older housing stock and its recently revived reputation as a home to political corruption.
Its later-developing neighboring towns, in contrast, have enjoyed building booms made easier by open land and more upscale images as bedroom communities. Though it lacks such an influx, Chicago Heights includes more than its share of families who have moved in and stayed for life.
In fact, 25-year resident Ed Lewis, 63, quips that he`s still considered an ”outsider” – because of his Irish, not Italian, descent and because he wasn`t born in the city.
”People stay because of family ties,” said Jim Grupp, 34, a third-generation member of a Chicago Heights family, speaking as he prepared to tee off at the private, 150-member Chicago Heights Country Club on a fall afternoon.
The parents, grandparents and great-grandparents of many current residents, including many descendants of Italian immigrants, were attracted to Chicago Heights years ago because of the jobs offered by the city, once the industrial giant of the south suburbs. Its manufacturers were so diverse that town officials once boasted there were more different products manufactured per capita in Chicago Heights than in any other U.S. city.
”You talk about America in a melting pot, any ethnic group you`re looking for, we have everything,” said Richard Felicetti, the son of Italian immigrants who was born in Chicago Heights and who has returned to his hometown as superintendent of District 170, the local elementary school district.
”I`m sure the magnet, as far as I`m concerned, is that I was born and raised here, and I can relive some of the things I did as a child. I can still remember going through school here, walking through places as a kid, places where we all did crazy things, and those are touching things.
”And I hear that the town is dying, and then I hear the other side, that the town is growing,” he said, noting the recent opening of a Cub Foods store on the town`s west side and a planned expansion of Kline`s Department store, a family-owned store opened by a Chicago Heights man in 1923 and now run by his nephew and great-nephew, George and Mitch Kline.
A drive through the center of Chicago Heights, about 30 miles south of Chicago, brings into view some lovely, well-preserved older homes in a variety of styles tucked under century-old trees. A drive to the city`s northwest side – the Homewood, Flossmoor, Olympia Fields side – finds spacious ranch homes, imitation Tudor and other styles laid nicely on typical winding suburban streets.
A drive south and east finds the city`s industrial and commercial center, surrounded mostly by small homes – some well-kept, some not – and small apartment buildings.
The once-busy commercial center, along Halsted Street and Chicago Road, shows unmistakable signs of the 1960s phenomenon that hit many older cities and towns. Many shops and businesses have moved to outlying shopping malls and commercial strips, leaving behind empty buildings and secondary businesses.
The largest area of new construction is in Robert`s Cove in northwest Chicago Heights, where 30 lots have been developed and the majority of homes built and sold. Prices for these new homes ranged from $230,000 to $260,000 last year, said Conrad Sweet, a Realtor for Coldwell Banker Santefort-Naughton in Chicago Heights. Twenty-nine townhomes being built in the development command slightly lower prices.
In the only other new housing development in Chicago Heights, Holbrook Circle, 22 new homes are being built and sold in the same price range as in Robert`s Cove, real estate officials said.
Property values in the community have risen 5 to 6 percent a year since the mid-1980s, said Joe Dabbs, president of Century 21/Dabbs, a brokerage firm that has seven offices in the south suburbs.
”There`s no boom and no bust. We don`t get the shock of a 25 percent decrease in values, or a huge increase,” he said.
Local politics are filled with far more intrigue than the local economy. Earlier this year, two top officials pleaded guilty to federal charges of tax evasion and promised to cooperate with a continuing investigation that is expected to reach into the upper echelons of the city`s government.
Enrico Doggett, 41, the city administrator, and Joseph Christofanelli, 27, director of economic development, pleaded guilty in a case expected to link one-time south suburban mob boss Albert Caesar Tocco with a money-laundering scheme that involves at least one Chicago Heights official.
The two officials admitted that they split $13,750 from a suburban medical center after the medical center approached them three years ago about using city-sponsored industrial revenue bonds to finance construction of a nursing home. The two officials failed to report the money on their tax returns, a payment they said was a legitimate fee for private consulting work. Other recent disputes in the city have involved charges of racial discrimination in housing.
One suit, nearing trial after nearly four years of jockeying by both sides in federal court, alleges that city officials improperly allowed the demolition of an apartment building occupied by blacks on the city`s west side in 1985, allegedly to keep blacks on the city`s poorer, east side.
The increasingly politicized black community is also trying to change the city`s commission form of government, in which the governing body is elected at large instead of by ward, and activists have filed several suits alleging underrepresentation of minorities in city jobs. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates 30 percent of the population to be black and 15 percent Hispanic.
The overall population is shrinking. The preliminary 1990 census puts the total at 32,703 residents, down 12 percent from the 37,026 counted in 1980.
But in many ways, Chicago Heights` boom years occurred 80 years ago, when its northerly neighbor, Chicago, was almost the only other place on the map. Its fastest growth occurred between 1900 and 1910, when its population nearly trippled in 10 years from 5,100 to a bustling 14,535.
The town`s first settler, Absolem Wells, had arrived in the area, albeit briefly, almost 70 years earlier than that.
In 1833, when Chicago was just three-eighths of an acre in size and home to only 350, Wells selected a spot along Thorn Creek in what is now Chicago Heights. Its location, near an important junction of two major early roads, made it a natural stopping point.
That north-south route, the Vincennes Trace, runs through what is now the center of Chicago Heights. The east-west Sauk Trail, the first major road in the area, ran just south of the city`s current borders.
Wells soon packed up the belongings in his cabin by the river and moved on, but other settlers quickly followed and created the demand for services that eventually would make the settlement a city.
The first merchant, Morris Murphy, opened shop in 1835. His store, stocked with goods carried by pony from Chicago, was ”considered a great convenience by early settlers,” according to an early account. The first school opened in 1836 with seven pupils and one teacher, Miss Cooper, who earned $1.25 a week, plus board.
By 1837, 129 people called the area home, but they called it Thorn Grove and, later, Bloom. It would be more than 50 years before the current moniker, Chicago Heights, would be bestowed.
By 1876, there were 10 schools with 282 pupils and enough teachers to find an average salary: $54.65 a week. Railroads began building lines through town, and in the 1890s a group of businessmen from Chicago saw golden opportunity and formed a development group, the Chicago Heights Land Association.
Farmers who had bought their land for as little as $1.25 an acre sold it to the association for $125 an acre, and a boom town was born.
The developers, led by Charles Wacker, the man for whom Chicago`s Wacker Drive is named and who was then chairman of the Chicago Plan Commission, assembled a 4,000-acre tract and began promoting the area with an eye toward attracting industrial development. And in 1892, the town was incorporated as a village and called Chicago Heights.
With the factories that were lured to town came Swedes, Italians, Greeks and blacks, adding to the existing population of Scottish, Irish and German settlers. By 1900, Chicago Heights was home to 67 manufacturing establishments and 5,100 residents.
Steady population growth continued through 1930, then leveled off slightly until the Baby Boom years of 1960 provided another 10-year spurt. By 1970, Chicago Heights` population peaked at 40,900 and has gradually declined since then.
Major employers are St. James Medical Center Hospital; Thrall Manufacturing Co., a railroad car manufacturer; Illinois Bell; and Ford Motor Co.
Bamonti, the zoning administrator, notes that Chicago Heights is still growing with the planned annexation of the 17-acre Gooder Henrichsen Co. Inc. structural steel plant, now in an unincorporated area on the community`s east side.
”Some of the younger generation has decided to move on to other pastures,” he said, describing what has happened to recent generations from Chicago Heights. ”But some still live here and work downtown.”
Asked why some decided to remain, making the city home to many three-generation families, he said simply, ”We`re family.”
