Hanover Park wants an identity, one that will transcend its two counties, four townships and seven school districts.
“Years ago, you went to high school football games, and they created that community center,” said Village President Irwin Bock. Today’s young people in Hanover Park, though, “go to nine high schools. We have to find other ways to do it.”
Like many bedroom suburbs that sprang up after World War II–and unlike older villages founded before the automobile eliminated the need to concentrate community services within walking distance of each other–Hanover Park grew up one subdivision after another, strung along Lake Street without a real town center.
“We have no downtown. We are in the process of trying to figure out if it is worth it for us to develop one,” Bock said.
The 40-year-old municipality has been searching for a tie that binds for some time.
More than a decade ago, village trustees proposed creating a downtown on 50 acres of undeveloped land near the Metra train station in the Ontarioville Historic District. But residents shot down the idea of creating a Mayberry look-alike, arguing that the need for road and sewer repairs was greater, Bock said.
Now, the roads have been repaired, a new sewer system is in place and community leaders are back at the drawing board planning an identity for their town.
As before, the idea is to create a downtown. This one would connect the historic district and Metra station on the DuPage County side of the village to the commercial strip along Lake Street in Cook County.
The Village Board voted recently to spend $30,500 to have a consultant, Trkla, Pettigrew, Allen & Payne Inc., do a four-month study.
The Chicago-based consulting firm will piece together possible combinations of retail, commercial and residential uses for the area along Lake Street west of Barrington Road. It also will determine if the area can be designated a tax increment financing (TIF) district.
Under state law, the special taxing district would make funds available for infrastructure improvements and developer incentives.
“Many of the properties are old, and frankly, there is a need for rehab,” said Village Manager Marc Hummel. “If TIF funding is available, it would have a major impact on how much rehabilitation could be done.”
Village officials have not decided what the area should look like. Perhaps it will be a place for festivals, maybe a community theater, Bock said.
Physically, the location is close to the center of the elongated suburb. Where the station sits is the closest thing to a nucleus the village has.
West of the station stands a white frame gazebo–a one-time try to make a statement to passersby so they would know they had, indeed, arrived at the town center.
Across the street from the station there is what some in Hanover Park consider the ideal center: a vacant, 25-acre parcel at the northwest corner of Lake Street and Barrington Road.
“People have an interest in being able to identify with something central to make them a community,” said Community Development Director John Said.
“The train station is an integral part of this. It’s an identifiable focal point, geographically near the town. And where else can you find a 25-acre spot right across from the train line? I see that as a significant opportunity.”
