Development trends in DuPage County traditionally have been measured by the number of new homes built on what once was farmland or the acres of cornfields that have been paved over or landscaped for corporate office complexes.
But there also has been development of a different sort in the county that largely has escaped notice.
The decades of population growth in DuPage have fueled a building boom in schools, churches, health-care facilities and other institutions to provide the services that are as much a part of a community’s infrastructure as streets, sidewalks and sewer lines.
“One of the most significant trends through the early and mid-1990s has been the development and expansion of institutional facilities in DuPage County,” says the draft of a new report from the county’s Regional Planning Commission.
Called the “DuPage County Growth Trends Report,” the study says that the construction of new or expanded educational facilities, religious institutions, government buildings, health-care and community facilities reflect past increases and anticipated growth in population, as well as a greater demand for services.
The 72-page report also says there continues to be steady growth in the construction of single-family homes, townhouses and business parks in the county.
And one of the newer trends in DuPage, according to the report, is the development–proposed or completed–of regional entertainment complexes, such as the Dave and Buster’s restaurant in Addison and a motor speedway under discussion at DuPage Airport in West Chicago.
But county planners say that what pops out from the numbers is the amount of space added over the past six years by those institutions and agencies that contribute something other than jobs, traffic and retail sales to DuPage.
Planners count, for example, 41 government-related construction projects built or proposed over the past six years. Those range from the new courthouse building at the county government complex in Wheaton to a public works garage in Roselle to a dozen new or expanded police and fire stations throughout DuPage.
The report also says there are about 50 church-related construction projects that have been completed or proposed since 1990–of which 27 are new facilities. The completed projects have added more than 600,000 square feet of space in DuPage for religious activities.
Construction of what the report calls community facilities, including an aquatic center in Bartlett and an addition to the Addison community center, have added another 155,000 square feet for recreation and other purposes in the county.
“Churches, public safety buildings, schools–all of these are things that get built on the back edge of a single-family housing boom,” said William Heniff, senior planner for the DuPage Development Department.
Unlike trends in the construction of new homes or new office space, which often are tied to the nation’s economic health, the building boom in institutional projects is fueled by population increases and the resulting growth in a congregation’s or community’s financial base.
Or, in the case of schools and some government projects, the new construction is fueled by the willingness of voters to approve bond issues or property-tax increases.
The county’s report says that “real estate market trends generally play a smaller role” in institutional development than they do in other types of construction.
For many projects, though, institutional construction raises the same sort of planning issues–questions about access, traffic and parking–as do new subdivisions or suburban office parks, according to Deborah Fagan, principal planner for the county’s Development Department.
The report also says:
– A significant trend in commercial development since 1990 was the construction of what planners describe as “big-box” retailers such as warehouse or electronics stores. The report anticipates over the next decade the re-use of some of the big-box stores owned by chains that have failed or pulled out of the Chicago market. The buildings that remain are attractive because of their size or location, the report says.
– The number of permits for residential construction in the county has increased steadily since 1991, after mostly declining during the recessionary years between 1988 and 1991. Since 1992, the number of building permits for single-family homes throughout the county has averaged about 5,500 a year.
Planners also are seeing more variety in the types of townhouse construction in DuPage, some luxury developments with price tags up to $400,000, but others in the $150,000 to $200,000 range.
– The development of office space and business parks has begun to pick up after a slow down in the early 1990s.
