The developer who plans to open an eatery at the site of the Brown’s Chicken & Pasta restaurant isn’t bothered by opposition to his plan that’s surfaced in recent days.
He’s just looking for a prime spot to open an Italian restaurant, without drawing attention to the fact that seven Brown’s employees were killed at the site five years ago.
“We no longer live in the 17th and 18th Century when people lived with superstition,” said Vincent V. Fiduccia Sr., speaking to Palatine trustees this week who gave him preliminary approval to move forward with his plan.
Indeed, the few locations in the Chicago area that can match that stretch of Northwest Highway in violent notoriety have, for the most part, dealt with their haunted past. Though they still exert a hold on the memories of some people, the locales by themselves have not posed an enduring problem.
For instance, John Wayne Gacy’s home in Norwood Park Township long has been razed and was replaced some time later, with no trace of his address on Summerdale Avenue. But the townhouse on Chicago’s Southeast Side where Richard Speck in 1966 killed eight student nurses has survived and is still used as a residence.
And the building where occurred arguably the most infamous Chicago slayings, the 1929 St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, was demolished in 1967. The gangland murders at a garage on North Clark Street are a marketing tool for a nearby tavern, which displays a picture of the victims.
The Brown’s killings, still unsolved, may never be ready for that kind of treatment. At the Village Board meeting Monday evening, one woman, a friend of one of the victims, read a statement where she expressed opposition to a new fast-food place.
“Instead of being concerned about the use of the property to profit the landowner . . . you would find an overwhelming desire to see the building torn down and a memorial park dedicated to the seven victims,” Joy McClain of Schaumburg said.
Fiduccia said that business is a good way to help a site distance itself from crimes.
“Palatine certainly will never forget,” Palatine Mayor Rita Mullins said. “But we must look to the future, to brighter memories.”
While hope and rational arguments can wipe away some psychic stains, even the forward march of commerce cannot entirely extinguish ignominy.
The vast majority of properties where out-of-the-ordinary slayings occur return to their original uses with little notice.
In Rolling Meadows, tradesmen were out last week in the Williamsburg Apartments just as soon as police allowed them to repair the bullet holes from a shooting–considered self-defense–that claimed the life of a 37-year-old man.
But the experience is different in those cases distinct for their malevolence.
Robert Smith Jr. was 19 in December 1978 when investigators arrived at the house next door and began removing the bodies of 29 boys and young men from Gacy’s home. The bodies of four more victims were discovered in Illinois rivers.
Smith said with the new development on the site, which sat vacant for almost a decade, there are only infrequent reminders of Gacy.
“People still come by but they don’t know the house since they took the address off,” Smith said.
Grace Beier, in her 70s, lives two houses down from the Gacy site.
In the years when the lot was empty, Beier said, people would put inappropriate signs and leave inappropriate mementos. But “nobody gives it a thought anymore,” she said.
“That was a shock, definitely, that morning to find out that (Gacy) was picked up,” she said. “It’s good that a house got built there because it blocks it out of what had been there.”
The Brown’s site sat vacant for a year until it was leased by Signature Cleaners. The operation was recently closed.
