”I came running into a council meeting, with my clothes covered with burrs, and said, `Hey, can I get $50,000 to begin renovation of the abandoned blast furnaces as a tourist site?`
”I think the other councilmen thought, `Are you nuts?` ”
Maybe so, but when Bob Eunson decides that a project, like the proposed renovation of the ruins of 120-year-old steel mill furnaces on the Illinois & Michigan Canal in Joliet as a tourist attraction, is worth pursuing, he does so with the kind of energy voters expect, but sometimes don`t get, from their elected officials.
Eunson, 39, is a second-term Joliet city councilman-at-large, meaning he is one of three councilmen not confined to representing one of Joliet`s five districts. He also is president of Eunson Dental Laboratories Ltd., a dental prosthetics lab; president of the Old House Emporium, a home renovation supply company; and a principal in the Urban Resource Group, a vintage building renovation business, all based in Joliet.
Originally from Chicago`s Beverly neighborhood, Eunson has lived in Joliet for eight years and brings an activist zeal to boosting his ”new hometown,” as he calls it.
”Joliet`s time has come. There`s more going on here now than in the last 40 years,” he said.
Eunson and his wife, Roberta (Bobbie), moved to Joliet from South Holland in 1984, when the city, like many small Midwestern towns, was struggling to recover from the crippling blow dealt it by the country`s recession. Throughout the late `70s and early `80s, Joliet`s steel, chemical and heavy manufacturing plants closed, until in 1982, unemployment in Joliet was the highest in the U.S., at 25 percent. With joblessness came poverty, declines in the quality of housing stock, increases in crime and other urban blight.
After searching Chicago and its southwest suburbs for a home, the Eunsons found a 14-room Victorian on Joliet`s stately Western Avenue at the bargain price of $94,000. For them, the home, a once-elegant doctor`s mansion built in 1901 and converted into a makeshift two-flat during the `60s, showed promise. So did the town.
”We felt instantly like we had come home,” said Bobbie, 37, who is originally from Palos Heights. Bobbie is a dialysis technician who also is vice president and bookkeeper for all the Eunson family businesses.
The Eunsons spent nearly five years restoring the 5,500-square-foot home to its original floorplan, with the help of old photographs, old paint lines and the memories of neighbors. It is decorated and furnished in turn-of-the-century style, thanks in part to local auctions and estate sales. It even boasts a living room mantelpiece that is reputed to have come from the home of Mrs. O`Leary, whose cow allegedly ignited the Chicago Fire.
The home is a stop on many tours of the area, including the neighborhood`s annual home tour.
”Bob and I have had our home on tours so many times that our children
(Kristin, 11, and Kyle, 6) think that everyone`s house is open to the public,” Bobbie said.
While working on the home, the Eunsons became familiar with several small manufacturers of specialty renovation supplies who encouraged them to open a store selling their products, since few existed in the Chicago area.
Bob found a building with its roof caved in on Chicago Avenue in the business district and bought it in 1988 for $22,500. He completed the renovation in 1989 to house his dental lab, which he moved from South Holland, and the Old House Emporium.
The turn-of-the-century retail space is filled with vintage reproduction items including lighting fixtures, English fireplace mantels, wallcoverings, door and window hardware, and European porcelain tiles. The shop also produces custom woodwork and hardware. Clients range from architects, builders and their clients to do-it-yourselfers in search of that elusive matching drawer pull.
”I`ve got a lot of catalogs, but there aren`t many places that sell hundreds of products in a retail atmosphere,” said architect Mike Lambert, 30, of Plainfield, who met Bob Eunson by visiting the store and now works with him as part of the Urban Resource Group. ”I specialize in historic preservation, and Bob and I met through that mutual interest.”
Lambert developed plans for the recently completed rehab of the apartment building next door to the Old House Emporium, which Eunson also owns.
Eunson`s home restoration also led to his first brush with city government. As a board member of his neighborhood association, the Cathedral Area Preservation Association, Eunson fought for zoning reform to discourage illegal conversions of single-family homes to apartment buildings and to foster historic preservation. His efforts attracted the notice of then-Mayor Charles Connor, who appointed him in 1988 to the city`s Zoning Board of Appeals.
Eunson was next asked by the city of Joliet and the Joliet-Will County Center for Economic Development to be a member of a committee charged with selecting a consulting firm to create a Joliet City Center Development Plan.
The committee chose Land Design Research International, whose principals have developed similar plans for cities as diverse as Baltimore; Manchester, England; and Tampa. The 20-year plan, published in 1990, includes provisions for everything from the recruitment of retailers to the renovation of building facades and is the city`s development bible.
In 1989, Connor nominated Eunson to take the seat of City Councilman-at-large Margaret Short, who had died shortly after her term began. In 1991 he was re-elected to a two-year term.
”Bob had invested in downtown Joliet when there weren`t many people doing that,” said Connor, 63, who was mayor from 1987-91. ”He can convince people that preservation is good business.”
Eunson`s investment was well timed. County statistics show Joliet`s unemployment rate is down, to 14.2 percent in March. Housing starts are up, particularly on the city`s West Side, and the old USX mills east of town are being leased to smaller manufacturing companies. Development has begun on the 380-acre Rockland Business Park, on Houbolt Drive on the city`s West Side, an $18 million project that will provide up to 4,000 jobs, according to Don Fisher, Joliet`s director of planning.
”Bob and I work closely together,” Fisher said. ”He`s not just an idea man but a hands-on person who gets in the dirt with us to bring projects to completion.”
Eunson and Fisher are engrossed in a project more glamorous than steel mills and industrial parks: riverboat gambling.
”I think this is just meant to be for Joliet,” Eunson said. ”It generates revenues, and it will bring a million people a year (developer`s estimate) downtown. We couldn`t pass it up.”
Harrah`s, owned by the Memphis-based Promus Co., is planning to build a $40-million gambling pavilion and riverboat dock in downtown Joliet on an eastern inlet of the Des Plaines River. When it opens in spring of 1993, the casino will join the Empress riverboat casino, funded by the Des Plaines River Entertainment Corp., a group of local investors, which opened June 17 on U.S. Route 6 outside Joliet. The two casino projects are expected to create a total of more than 1,200 jobs for the region.
The Joliet City Council, Eunson said, splits between ”councilmen who want controlled development and those who will do anything for it.”
Eunson`s position was expressed in his response to a phone call to his office by a fellow council member: ”You know, I`m not voting for that condo development. It`s the ugliest piece of garbage I ever saw.
”It`s a mistaken idea that restrictions drive away development. Sure, you`ll drive out the low-end guys, but the others like to know you have quality standards. That`s a hard idea to get across (in the council).”
Eunson becomes his most animated when speaking about preserving Joliet`s architectural heritage.
”Joliet was knocked flat for a long time,” he said. ”In the `60s and
`70s there was terrible abuse of structures here. Homes were illegally converted to multifamily, and when urban renewal money was available, entire blocks were leveled. Our courthouse was leveled, and a new one, the same size, was built out of precast concrete. Now we need more space, and our courthouse looks like a missile bunker.
”I wake up every morning in a home I couldn`t afford to build in my wildest dreams. I think you have to look at other alternatives before you tear something down. That`s why I introduced Joliet`s historic preservation ordinance, which creates historic districts and guidelines for preservation and renovation.
”When you build something, it should harmonize, like the addition to our library. (Building an addition that harmonized with the building`s facade)
meant a smaller building, but one that people would be proud of after we`re gone.”
How does this transplanted Chicagoan, who takes a hard line on zoning and speaks the language of the developer, using terms like ”creating a sense of place,” get along with the folks who grew up in this once-sleepy town?
Fisher said: ”I`m a third-generation Joliet native, and I appreciate Bob because he helps me see things in our city that are unique and special, that we took for granted. Because he`s from outside Joliet, he`s brought a new sense of direction that has helped us tremendously in our work.”
Said Joliet Mayor Arthur Schultz, 58, a former police officer: ”Bob is very interested in historic preservation, which doesn`t interest me as much, but he has a sincere dedication to the city and interest in its other problems, like gangs and crime.”
”Bob is a very positive influence on this town,” said former Mayor Connor, a Joliet native. ”He has the ability to persuade people that the older sections of this town have a lot to offer and that to disregard them is to lose a lot of what people worked for.”
”I enjoy being a councilman,” Eunson said. ”I`ve never been in politics before, and it`s a learning process, dealing with people who may not agree with you.
”Bobbie and I travel to other cities that are like Joliet, and (it helps to) bring ideas back. I beat people over the heads with our competition.”
Bobbie sees the weekend visits to other small cities as a necessary combination of work and family time. ”Our schedules don`t allow us to take a two-week vacation, so we go on a weekend every few months,” she said. ”We always bring the kids and rent a hotel with an indoor pool. The compromise is we look at the town, and the kids get equal time in the pool.
”As a councilman-at-large, Bob represents the entire city, not just one district, so he attends a lot of meetings and is on committees dealing with issues all over the city.
”I would be foolish to tell you that it hasn`t interfered with personal time. When I start thinking, is it worth it, someone will say thanks, or a lifelong resident will tell me that (Bob is) good for the city. When I get frustrated, I remember those small but significant things.”
No visit with Bob Eunson is complete without a tour of his beloved Joliet. First stop is Union Station, a 30,000-square-foot station built in 1911, renovated with $7 million in state and federal grants. The project won a 1992 Illinois Preservation Award for Preservation Project of the Year from the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois.
Several stops later, on the eastern edge of town, are the overgrown remains of the oldest steel mill in the nation (most recently a USX plant before its closure in the 1930s), built in 1869. Four acres of cavernous blast furnace pits dug deep into what is now a forest floor, rambling brick walkways and limestone ramps are reminiscent of Roman ruins.
Eunson scrambled through the brush surrounding his pet project, which will be known as Heritage Park, already seeing a tourist attraction rising from the ashes.
”It will have a trail along the I & M Canal connecting it to Lockport, interpretative sites, a visitors` center,” he said.
Does he ever run out of energy?
Eunson answers with a parable of a parking lot.
”We were looking at the design for the gaming complex and saw that they were going to build a parking deck in a spot near the lagoon that we wanted for a hotel. By catching it, we were able to change it. Those are the moments where you feel you`ve made a difference.
”I`m happy to be a part (of Joliet). The people here have been wonderful. Bobbie and I compare it to going to a party where you don`t know anyone, but you end up having the best time of your life.”
