For years, a life-size replica of a Holstein cow stood atop a pedestal at a major intersection in Harvard. The community, about 60 miles northwest of Chicago’s Loop, has always been known for its spring Milk Days festival, a tribute to rural traditions.
The big black-and-white cow was well-enough known to be included (and pictured) in a story on the importance of community landmarks (Real Estate, Sept. 20). Nonetheless, not long ago, the cow, named Hermilda, was moved from the intersection of Illinois Highway 173 and U.S. Highway 14 into a nearby park. Harvard Village Clerk Chris Ferguson says the Illinois Department of Transportation relocated the cow because it had become a safety hazard for motorists and because room was needed for a road-widening project. “It looks nice where it is now,” said Ferguson, explaining that a farm mural has been painted as a backdrop for Hermilda.
So it goes. A monument to agriculture gets shifted to the sidelines. Change plods its way to the far fringes of Chicago.
Towns once considered little more than crossroads where farmers would meet attract new residents and more houses. Elburn, Hampshire, Antioch and Manhattan are just some of the little villages gaining reputations as good places to live.
“People are moving to small towns,” said Michael Pawlukiewicz, a planner for the Urban Land Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based group that aims to educate the public on land use in urban areas.
The market for fringe-area homes is being driven by the fact that rural towns are becoming satellite communities for Chicago’s growing suburbs. People who work in suburbs such as Naperville, for example, are buying houses in little towns such as Sugar Grove. They say they can get more house for the money and still manage the commute, which is often far shorter and less taxing than the trip to downtown Chicago faced by many workers each day.
But growth on the fringes raises questions and problems for residents, developers and local governments alike. Old-time residents don’t always like the influx of newcomers. New subdivisions can stretch municipal budgets and strain services. Meanwhile, developers, pushed by the demand for affordable housing, say it’s getting harder to find inexpensive land in towns that welcome growth.
“Bringing subdivisions to these little towns definitely changes their character,” said planner Pawlukiewicz.
Between 1970 and 1990 the population of Chicago’s suburbs increased 24 percent, or almost 1 million people, according to the Chicago-based Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission. During this same period, overall employment in the Chicago area grew 21 percent. Most of that increase took place in the newer suburban employment centers, such as Schaumburg and Aurora.
By 2020, the population in northeastern Illinois is expected to increase to slightly more than 9 million people, according to the Planning Commission. Employment will increase by 37 percent, to 5.3 million jobs. And suburban job growth will continue to outpace city employment, planners believe.
That means more people will probably be moving to small, rural towns.
Megan Korczak and her husband, Joey, recently purchased a three-bedroom home in Harvard. Her husband works for a pipe fitter’s union and drives to different job sites throughout the metropolitan area.
Megan Korczak grew up in the near-west suburb of Oak Park. After attending college in Montana, she moved in with her parents who had bought an old Victorian farm house in Harvard that they were restoring.
She found she liked the rural setting, more akin to the outdoors lifestyle she had become fond of in Montana. So the decision to buy a house in Harvard was an easy one. “I like the fact that it’s dark here at night,” she said. “I like the way it smells. It’s so pretty.”
Even though he often has to drive long distances to his job, Megan Korczak says her husband doesn’t mind the commute. He prefers living near his family in outlying McHenry County.
As first-time home buyers, the Korczaks might have picked a spot a little closer to Chicago, but home prices were too high. The couple paid $85,000 for their Harvard home, a fixer-upper in the old part of town. “We could never have afforded this house in a place like Woodstock,” said Megan Korczak, referring to the town just a little to the southeast. “We would have gotten a tiny ranch house with no land there.”
Generally, housing gets cheaper the farther it is from the central city. Housing consultant Tracy Cross likes to use the 7 percent rule. In California, he says, housing prices drop 7 percent per freeway exit. “It’s a funny little way to explain how you can create a growth area if you are priced lower than the central area,” said Cross, whose company is based in Schaumburg.
Diane Hammon sells homes in DeKalb, a town about 55 miles west of the Loop that, for some, has become a bedroom community of Naperville. She says people who work in the western suburbs are moving to DeKalb, home of Northern Illinois University, not only to have a simpler way of life, but also because they can get a bigger and better house than they would in the suburbs.
Hammon figures first-time buyers in DeKalb pay about $120,000 to $160,000 for a single-family home. “Anything in St. Charles (nearly 20 miles to the east) will cost 20 to 30 percent more,” she said.
Real estate agents like to emphasize that the commute from a small town to a big suburb is usually no longer than travel times from closer-in, more congested places. They say a 30-minute drive to work on an open highway is better than wrestling with suburban traffic.
Paul Sunderland bought a house in Ottawa, a town where the Fox and Illinois Rivers meet more than 80 miles southwest of the Loop. He works for Commonwealth Edison and, at the time he purchased the house, he thought he was being transferred to the company’s LaSalle plant near Ottawa. Instead, he will be working in the company’s Downers Grove office, only 22 miles from Chicago. He still plans to keep the Ottawa house and commute, figuring the trip will take him about 70 minutes.
“We like the town and the area, so we are deciding to stay there,” said Sunderland, who moves into his new house in October. A neat thing he enjoys about Ottawa is that the downtown traffic lights are synchronized, making it possible to make laps through the central district without a stop.
Like other home buyers in fringe areas, Sunderland says a big attraction was the price. “There is no way in Downers Grove we could touch the house we are getting in Ottawa,” he said. Sunderland paid $130,000 for his new-construction three-bedroom, 1,750-square-foot house.
Builders say demand for lower cost housing has pushed them to the fringes. They argue that not everyone can afford an expensive home and land is cheaper in outlying areas.
Farmland adjacent to a municipality, ripe for annexation, can sell for anywhere from $6,000 to $16,000 an acre, real estate agents say. The cost of these so-called transitional parcels in the path of development is rising as much as 10 percent a year.
Apparently, housing prices are already increasing in some areas.
The Tiffany Farms development in far north suburban Antioch, near the Wisconsin border in Lake County, has new houses priced from $139,000 to $200,000. “Buyers are trading up into these houses,” said Ed Havlick, president of Rolling Meadows-based United Homes Inc.
Havlick, also president of the Home Builders Association of Greater Chicago, thinks home buyers willing to move farther out are seeking a little more space for their money. He says many buyers at his Antioch project are coming from within Lake County.
But, as families and development push outward, municipal services often get stretched.
Take, for example, the town of Elburn, about 48 miles west of the Loop. The town’s population grew from 1,275 in 1990 to 2,236 in 1997.
“That’s a 75 percent increase in seven years,” said Matthew Zimmerman, village administrator of Elburn. “That’s a lot of growth.
Zimmerman says the town is dealing with the newcomers in a variety of ways. Two new 500-student elementary schools opened this year to serve the local school district, which stretches from the west side of Aurora to the east side of DeKalb. Eight police officers now patrol the town that for years got by with just three. The town also has hired a full-time building inspector, replacing the part-timers used in the past.
Since 1996, the town has averaged about 40 to 50 new residential living units a year. “The village is comfortable with that level for now,” said Zimmerman. “But the potential to mushroom exists. The village board is trying hard to keep that from happening.”
But Elburn itself is changing.
Zimmerman says new commercial development is underway at the intersections of Illinois Highways 38 and 47 on the northern edge of town. A new strip mall is being built there. The corner also has a new bank, medical building and McDonald’s restaurant. “We want new services. We want to enhance our tax base,” said Zimmerman.
At the same time, Zimmerman and other village officials want to keep the downtown vital. He hopes another commercial district will be developed south of town. With new commercial developments on either side of town, Zimmerman hopes shoppers will stop at downtown stores.
While some towns wrestle with the effects of growth, others embrace it. The town of Huntley, northwest of Elgin, has adopted a rapid-growth strategy. It is adding new housing, plus a huge senior citizen project developed by Del Webb Corp. of Arizona.
Harvard home buyer Megan Korczak thinks she bought at the right time. She hopes housing values there will escalate as its popularity grows. But she also says that property prices won’t go up much until there is improvement in the local schools, a system swamped by new residents and a growing Hispanic population with special language needs. “I think eventually the schools will straighten out,” she said. If not, she will send her daughter, who’s 18 months old, to a private school when she reaches school age.
Planners, concerned about the effects and costs of sprawl, are trying to find ways to promote sensible development. Some advocate an idea called smart growth, which emphasizes the construction of residential clusters.
“We are in that camp,” said MarySue Barrett, president of the Chicago-based Metropolitan Planning Council. She believes there is a mismatch between jobs and housing; people can’t afford to live near their work. Long commutes put a strain on family life, while also making it hard for companies to retain good workers. “It’s a big, messy issue,” Barrett said.
In Illinois, a significant step was taken during the last legislative session, Barrett says, with the appointment of a smart-growth task force that will look at everything from the loss of agricultural land to the impact of growth on existing communities.
Other states provide examples of how smart growth planning can work. Maryland, for instance, has adopted smart-growth policies. In particular, the state improves existing infrastructures, instead of spending money on fringe areas. Development can still take place in outlying spots, but big government programs, like road building, won’t be approved in undeveloped areas.
Meanwhile, critics of development worry that houses and pavement will reach ever outward at a quickening pace. In a recent report, the Sierra Club listed Chicago among the worst 10 cities for urban sprawl.
Housing consultant Cross disputes that view. He doesn’t believe the kind of market forces are at work today that produced rapid expansion in the 1970s and 1980s. “Expansion of the satellite employment base has not been as aggressive as it was when Schaumburg and Oak Brook evolved,” he said. “Development will not expand as fast as before.”
