Although Daniel Krause and his wife are natives of the southwest suburbs, they knew little about Crestwood, Alsip or Midlothian a few years back.
”I looked into the area as a place to build some new homes,” says Krause, 32, a builder who eventually constructed 12 homes in Crestwood.
”But once I found out about everything the area had going for it, I was sold,” Krause says. He and his wife, Cindy, 30, moved a couple years ago from nearby Worth into one of the homes he built. They have two daughters:
Michelle, 4, and Christine, 2.
Krause discovered that Crestwood is the kind of place where anyone who has a physical disability or is retired can have his driveway cleaned of snow by the village without charge.
He also found out that Alsip enjoys strong economic stability because of its large business and industrial base. And in Midlothian, it`s common for grandparents and grandchildren to be walking hand-in-hand down the street.
Once people such as the Krauses discover the villages, they commit to them for decades.
”This is a comfortable and quiet place,” says Arnold Andrews, Alsip`s mayor since 1973. ”A lot of the kids who grew up here are now moving back here with their young families.”
”Because of everything we have going here, people simply stay put in our community,” says Chester Stranczek, Crestwood`s mayor since 1962. ”We have second and third and fourth generations of residents here.”
One example is Dorothy Oleshko`s family. Oleshko, 69, moved from Chicago to Midlothian with her family when she was less than a year old. Now her two grandchildren live about six blocks away from the home where she and her husband Walter, 70, have lived for 47 years.
”What`s nice about this town are the families,” Oleshko says. ”There have always been lots of little children here. As people get older, they sell their homes to their children so their grandchildren can grow up here. My son, who lives nearby, bought his home from his in-laws.”
Alsip grocer George Fotopoulos would agree. He opened a supermarket at 117th Street and Pulaski Road 36 years ago and today serves the grown children of many of his original customers.
”They remember this place as the friendly neighborhood grocery store where we know their names,” says Fotopoulos, who runs the store and adjoining deli with his brother, Jim. ”And they come back to shop here, despite the presence of the big chains.”
Though family-oriented, the villages also are strong on business.
”That`s what makes this area so unlike the typical bedroom communities in the southwest suburbs,” Andrews says.
Crestwood has been so successful with its businesses and the taxes that they generate that it plans to start refunding property taxes to its residents. ”People are very happy with our tax-refund program,” Stranczek says. ”I had one woman (from just outside Crestwood) call me today to ask if she could annex her house to Crestwood.”
Although the three villages share similar traits, they have their differences. Alsip is the largest of the three, with a population of 18,800
(according to the census) and an area of 8 square miles. Midlothian has 14,274 residents in 4 square miles, and Crestwood has 10,783 residents in 2 1/ 2 square miles.
Despite an increase in housing in the last 10 years, those population figures are close to what the towns registered in 1980 because of decreasing family sizes, village officials say.
That population growth finally has slowed after years of expansion that date to the 1830s, when the first settlers made their way into the region.
The area`s rich topsoil and the Rock Island Railroad line into Chicago attracted a few hundred farmers by the late 1870s.
In the late 1890s, the area got another boost when several wealthy Chicago industrialists decided the lush-green spaces of Midlothian would be a perfect place for a golf course and country club. They built a facility in 1898 that still stands on 147th Street just west of Cicero Avenue. The golfers named the country club Midlothian, after the ancient Scottish word for
”challenge.”
To bring members to the country club, the Rock Island Railroad built a spur off its south line to the country club, and that quickly encouraged development.
Farming continued to be the main industry, and by the early 1900s, the region supported numerous small, truck-farming businesses specializing in crops such as corn, asparagus, cabbage and green beans, as well as dairy products.
Midlothian incorporated in 1925, with village leaders taking the name of the country club.
Alsip incorporated in 1927 after farmers became concerned over the rising number of cemeteries that were being created in the area because of easy access by train. The village`s first ordinance called for a stop to any new cemeteries.
The village was named for brothers Frank and Charles Alsip, who operated the area`s first industry, a brickyard that opened in 1885.
Crestwood incorporated a year later, taking its name from the crest and the woods that lined the Calumet Sag Channel, which had been finished a few years earlier and served as a waterway between the Chicago Sanitary Ship Canal and the Calumet River.
The communities saw dramatic changes after World War II. The existing railroad lines and the expressway system`s growth brought hundreds of businesses and thousands of residents in the 1950s and `60s. Hundreds of acres of farmland were rezoned to accommodate the influx.
One of the business people who settled in Alsip then was Fotopoulos, who remembers seeing farmland from the front door of his store.
”The village has grown 10 times more than I ever thought it would back then,” he says. ”I thought this would be a good location for a business, but I never dreamed it would be this good.”
Alsip has the largest commercial base. ”Probably 75 percent of our land is zoned for commercial and industrial uses,” says Mary Schmidt, executive director of the Alsip Chamber of Commerce and the Alsip Economic Development Commission, a committee of village officials and private business owners that encourages development.
More than 750 businesses operate in the village, bringing in a daytime population of 40,000 employees. Most are light manufacturers, warehousing and distribution operations, and small machine shops, she says.
Among the companies are Coca Cola, Martin Oil, Union Carbide and Kmart.
Companies are attracted to Alsip because of the pro-business attitude, says Jeanette O`Toole, president of the Alsip Chamber of Commerce.
”Alsip is very aggressive in recruiting and retaining businesses, and we have a quality work force available in this area,” she says. ”Plus the community has three organizations geared to businesses: the development commission, the chamber and the Alsip Industrial District Association (a business organization for local industries).”
A more inherent advantage is the aforementioned access to transportation. ”Alsip sits right on (Interstate Highway) 294,” O`Toole says. ”And you have easy access to (Interstate) Highways 57, 80 and 55 as well as the Calumet Sag Channel.”
The high number of businesses results ”in a high level of village services and low property taxes for residents,” Mayor Andrews says.
Crestwood shares much of Alsip`s pro-business attitude; it has about 500 businesses.
The most recent project is the RiverCrest Shopping Center, on the 137-acre site of the former Howell Airport, near 132nd Street and Cicero Avenue. The first store opened in June 1989; the center is about half completed. Businesses include Venture, Sears, an Omni Food Store and a miniature golf course.
Another plum has been the Winner`s Circle off-track betting parlor, which opened in February. ”The betting parlor will bring in $1 million a year to our village,” Mayor Stranczek says.
The recent developments will create a tax surplus that will allow the village to start refunding property taxes to its 3,000 homeowners next year, he says.
”If you have a home in Crestwood, you`ll pay your taxes like you normally would. Then you bring the paid tax bill to the village, and we will refund part of it. Next year, we will be returning $1 million, or 25 percent of the tax bills. So if your tax bill is $1,000, you get back $250. Within five years, we hope to pay it back 100 percent.”
Midlothian is more residential in nature, with most of its businesses being small, independent retail operations, say Shirley Ciferri and Darice Lugo, executive directors of the Midlothian Chamber of Commerce.
”Looking at the rapid growth of the communities to the west of us, competition has become much tougher in the last few years,” Ciferri says.
”But we still have (a) strong commercial (presence) down our main streets:
147th Street and Pulaski and Cicero Avenues.”
As for the Alsip`s future, ”our attitude is to keep property taxes where they are or reduce them but increase our village services,” Andrews says.
”In five years, when many communities will be wrestling with property-tax dilemmas, we`ll be resting on our laurels a bit,” Crestwood`s
Stranczek says. ”We`ve already got a million dollars in the bank for next year`s taxes.”
That outlook will undoubtedly please new residents, such as the Krauses.
”We`ve never had a doubt about our decision to move in here,” Krause says. ”It just gets better and better.”
