Transplanted Ohioans Jill and Tim Kline formed their first impressions of Aurora on news reports of violence in the Fox River town.
Then it came time to buy a home and, Jill Kline said, the stereotypes didn’t hold up.
“Everybody hears, `It’s Aurora’ and you think of gangs,” said Kline, a secretary who moved into the Chicory Place development in Aurora in February.
“The fact of the matter is that it’s not a gang population out of control. That’s a very narrow scope. I don’t find it frightening.” Neither, apparently, do many among the swell of home buyers in recent years who have earned this city of 110,000 the distinction as one of the fastest-growing in Illinois, with a population predicted to top 150,000 by 2010.
“You can take a dart, throw it at the map and somewhere, throughout the city, development is happening,” said Sherman Jenkins, assistant director of the Aurora Economic Development Commission.
Still, with gang-related and other violence in the news-such as the Feb. 17 slaying of Moshe Rogers, co-captain of the Aurora Central Catholic High School basketball team-cleaning up Aurora’s woolly reputation has taken some muscle, civic leaders and residents say. Rogers was shot through the window of his car as he drove home with his brother after leading his basketball team to victory.
“I’ll be candid,” said Rusty Erickson, Aurora’s community development director. “The image is one we work to overcome every day. . . . We try to market ourselves to the area and outside.”
Aurora has remained in first or second place for new-home permits issued in the Chicago region since 1990, swapping crowns three times with neighboring Naperville, according to the Bell Federal Survey of Building. Last year, almost 930 permits were granted, according to Aurora’s Community Development Department.
No fewer than 15 residential projects are in progress, from downtown lofts to tract and million-dollar golf course homes. Even still, Erickson bristles at the word “boomtown.” He prefers to call the city’s growth “steady and systematic.”
Much of the development is taking place to the east, within Aurora’s DuPage County borders, though several subdivisions have sprouted on the Kane County side. The Downer Lofts condo development, a first for the community, is a project officials hope willbe replicated elsewhere around Stolp Island, which anchors the downtown district.
The lofts include studios, one-and two-bedroom units for $59,500 to $109,500, built over an exercise room and a half- dozen shops. The project was largely spurred by the Hollywood Casino, which has brought jobs, new restaurants and, to open soon, Aurora’s first downtown inn in decades.
Officials and residents say that former Chicago Bears running back Walter Payton’s hopes of opening a microbrewery and entertainment complex in the historic Aurora Roundhouse could infuse more life into the once-dying downtown.
The roundhouse, once a huge repair/turnaround facility for railroad cars, is being restored.
“We’re coming into our own again,” said Vivian Saville, director of sales and marketing for the loft project.
Other older neighborhoods are also undergoing change, from the rehabilitation of Victorian homes on the near east side to Waterford, a 480-acre development that will incorporate 1,500 apartments, townhouses and single-family homes.
Most of the new houses are rising on the city’s far east side. That they border on tony Naperville is no small coincidence. Similar homes sell for as much as 5 percent less in Aurora, market analysts say, though residents have equal access to amenities such as the Fox Valley Mall and the Indian Prairie School District.
In some cases, certain Aurora subdivisions even carry a Naperville address.
“That’s just icing on the cake,” said Diana Houston of Wiseman-Hughes Enterprises Inc., which is building 260 homes at Chicory Place in the city for $172,900 and under.
Said Tracy Cross, a building industry marketing consultant, “Aurora no longer remains a pure stepchild to Naperville. That’s really begun to change.”
The shift began 30 years ago, Cross said, when Aurora annexed huge chunks of land for what would become master-planned communities, such as the 1,000-home White Eagle Club and slightly smaller Stonebridge, host to the Ameritech Senior Open.
The East-West Tollway was also extended, creating an obvious path to the east, Erickson said.
As some of Aurora’s industries dried up in the lean years of the ’70s and early ’80s, city leaders began encouraging home construction to remain viable, Cross said.
Whatever the factors behind its growth, officials in the Indian Prairie district have spent the past 10 years trying to accommodate the student boom.
In 1984, 3,235 students were enrolled in District 204’s six schools, said Howard Crouse, assistant superintendent for elementary education. This year, enrollment is almost four times as high. By 1997, the district will comprise 21 schools, largely financed by referenda, he said.
“The growth so dominates every discussion we have with the public, the faculty and with our board,” Crouse said. “It’s always on our shoulders.”
The school district ranks favorably, boasting solid test scores and a fraction of the drop-out rate in Aurora’s other districts. Its reputation has been a “driving force” for newcomers, said Cathy Rohn, spokeswoman for Aurora Venture, developer of Stonebridge, Oakhurst and The Villages at Meadowlakes, all in Aurora.
As new schools and amenities, such as the new Eola Community Center, spring up in newer parts of town, some residents in the older sections feel slighted, said Ald. Scheketa Hart.
But while parts of Grand Boulevard are still without sidewalks, recent improvements have been made in central Aurora, Hart said.
The Hill Avenue business district and other pockets of the near east side have been spruced up.
And certain homeowners have received city funds to demolish or remodel dense quarters, a step toward curbing drugs and crime.
The Waterford project, a multiuse development at 5th and Farnsworth Avenues, ultimately may pump more money into city schools and improvements in the form of increased property- and sales-tax revenues, said city officials. In addition to new homes, plans call for an office park, day care center and shops.
Some of Hart’s constituents are frustrated that redevelopment is taking so long.
“They still feel their tax dollars should count. They paid their dues, especially the senior citizens,” she said.
Violence claimed 17 lives in 1993, but community policing and other efforts are being taken to control the problem, Mayor David Pierce said. “That’s part of what the real world is about. . . . Terrible things can happen almost anywhere.”
Judy and Don Delano relocated from Mississippi last fall for Don’s job. The couple moved into the Villages At Meadowlakes, where the 420 homes currently sell for $160,000 to $300,000.
Judy Delano says she feels safe in her southeast neighborhood. When her home alarm went off recently, three patrol cars arrived in minutes. Yet, she has only visited her own downtown twice, preferring to run errands in Naperville.
“When I go to downtown Aurora, it scares the heck out of me,” said Delano, whose children are grown. “I’ve heard so many negative things about Aurora-from Naperville residents, of course.”
The more newcomers to help fund public services, the better off the entire city will be, Pierce said. He calls Aurora a microcosm of the greater Chicago area, its suburban spread offset by gangs and other problems formerly associated with the inner city.
But he relishes the diversity, which he sums up as “clerks and janitors to CEOs.”
