While the populations of most of Chicago’s suburbs grew steadily over the years, Carpentersville’s census played “Mother May I,” taking one giant step forward in the 1950s, one baby step backward in the ’70s, then another giant step forward in the ’90s.
The town was founded by accident in 1837 when Charles and Daniel Carpenter, brothers from Massachusetts who were headed for the Rock River, couldn’t get past the flooded Fox River.
By the 1850s, Carpentersville had grown into a tiny, but thriving, river hamlet. Charles’ son, Angelo, gets credit for putting Carpentersville on the map by building the town’s first store, bridge and mills, and founding the Illinois Iron & Bolt Co. foundry. Most of his buildings, including the former foundry, still stand today.
While neighboring towns mushroomed, Carpentersville, for a century, remained a cozy cluster of mills, homes and churches in what is now called Old Town. Then, in the 1950s, the population soared from 1,523 to 17,424 after L.W. Besinger and his family built the Meadowdale neighborhood on the east side of Illinois Highway 25.
The Besingers turned several farms into a grid of streets lined with modest ranches and tri-levels, for World War II veterans and their families. Long before mega-malls, the Besingers built the Meadowdale Shopping Center, anchored by such retailers as Wieboldt’s, Carson Pirie Scott, Piggly Wiggly and Woolworth’s, and featuring an indoor ice-skating rink.
When the ’50s-born kids grew up and left the Meadowdale neighborhood in the ’70s, the population declined. Shoppers headed for Woodfield, then Spring Hill Mall, built on the line dividing Carpentersville and West Dundee.
Fast forward to 1992 for Carpentersville’s second giant step forward, when the village annexed 1,100 acres of farmland on its western edge that straddled Randall Road.
Now half-built, this plot alone accounted for the 400 to 500 residential building permits the village has issued annually for the last three years. This year, Carpentersville’s population topped 27,500, making it Kane County’s largest town after Elgin and Aurora.
How much larger can Carpentersville get? Already, it is bound by Barrington Hills to the east and a boundary agreement with Algonquin to the north. “There is still some no-man’s land left in some unincorporated areas to the south,” reports Patrick Grill, the village’s new community development director. “To the west, there is farmland left between Carpentersville and Gilberts and Huntley. How much Carpentersville grows in that direction depends on boundary agreements with those towns. Now, I’d say the population will be 35,000 by 2010. But ask me again in six months, and my answer may be 50,000. It depends on how aggressive we are to the west.”
The west side annexation, known by residents as New Carpentersville, is drawing newcomers, including Tony and Trish Lucas and their children, ages 3 and 6, who bought a three-bedroom, contemporary home in Kimball Hill Homes’ 291-acre development on the former Edwards family farm, called Kimball Farms.
“We were transferred here from a rural area in Indiana, so we didn’t even consider moving closer to Chicago,” reports Tony, who commutes 15 minutes to his job in Hoffman Estates. “Here, we have a small-town feeling and can see cornfields from our house. The schools are good and the crime rate is low.” Compared to developments they toured in Lake in the Hills, Algonquin and Crystal Lake, Tony says $183,000 was a bargain for his multi-level home with tile flooring, fireplace and partially finished basement.
The Lucases are typical of the Kimball Farms buyers, says Brent Gustafson, director of marketing at the Rolling Meadows-based developer, which is selling 1,506- to 4,009-square-foot single-family homes from $179,990 to $258,990, and 1,000- to 1,470-square-foot town homes from $119,990 to $135,990. “Most of the buyers are young families in their 20s and 30s, first-time buyers or first-time move-ups, who are transferred in or are from suburbs to the east,” he says. “They like the access to I-90 because they commute to Hoffman Estates, Schaumburg or even Oak Brook. They are moving west for a better quality of life, so they can look out at night and still see open areas and beautiful sunsets.”
A few miles to the east, Maryland-based Ryland Homes Inc. is catering to the same, young market at its 104-acre Shenandoah development on Sleepy Hollow and Miller Roads. Although Ryland does not yet have models here, buyers are already signing contracts.
The two- and three-bedroom town homes with two-car garages run from $114,900 to $141,900 and have 1,000 to 1,554 square feet.
Ryland’s single-family homes come in two series: Hallmark series, with base prices from $154,900 to $182,900 and square footage from 1,390 to 2,005, and Landmark, with price tags from $177,900 to $208,900 and square footage from 1,748 to 2,570.
Mary and John Gerritsen from Elgin bought a wooded lot adjacent to the neighborhood’s 40 acres of lakes. “We were willing to live with some construction in order to get the pre-construction price of $219,000,” says Mary, who commutes to O’Hare while her husband drives to a job in Elmhurst.Their four-bedroom, contemporary home, now under construction, will have a 2 1/2-car garage, vaulted ceilings, walk-in closets, fireplace, bay windows, ceramic flooring and a roughed-in bathroom in the basement.
His Carpentersville buyers want “informal and open” floor plans, reports Ryland’s vice president of sales and marketing, Bob Meyn. “We’re building with lots of space in family rooms and kitchens,” he says. “In fact, many buyers are choosing not to include formal dining rooms or living rooms.”
Buyers who can afford even more elbow room can buy semi-custom homes from Westmont-based Chestnut Homes Inc., which is building on 1/3-acre lots on the hilly, woodsy Spring Acres Hills on Sleepy Hollow Road. The builder has four floor plans ranging from 2,287 to 3,103 square feet, with four or five bedrooms. Prices range from the low to mid-$200,000s. Walkout and lookout basements cost more.
Or homeowners can buy 1/2- to 2-acre Spring Acres Hills home sites directly from Cedar View Homes for $101,200 to $170,000. Custom homes plus lots start at $375,000. Cedar View Homes is a dealer of Lindal post-and-beam homes, but also builds other styles. Cedar View Homes is owned by the Parsons family, which bought the land in 1950 and planted the mature pine trees there. Like the other neighborhoods in New Carpentersville, Spring Acres Hills has municipal water and sewer.
In addition to the town homes within the west side subdivisions, Town & Country Homes in Westchester just broke ground for Aragon, a town home development on in-fill property near Illinois Highway 25, off Lake Marian Road. It will include 126 two-bedroom, two-story and ranch town homes with 1,200 to 1,431 square feet. “Our studies show there’s a need for rental alternatives for young people working on the I-90 corridor, so we’re trying to keep the price low, starting in the low $100,000s,” reports Ed Fitch, executive vice president of marketing.
While the newcomers plant grass seed and assemble swingsets, city officials are coping with Carpentersville’s growth and changing image. “For years, Carpentersville had a bad image — the county’s whipping post,” says village President Cheryal Callahan, a former bank teller who won the village presidency in 1997 with a pledge to control growth while preventing the village’s older neighborhoods from decaying. “But we’ve always been compared to smaller towns. Carpentersville is larger, so there is more crime than there is in smaller towns.”
While all eyes focused on the development of the west side annexed land, Callahan, a 22-year east side resident, implemented programs to encourage long-term buyers instead of landlords to buy east side homes. “The goal is to keep density down and keep properties maintained,” she says. “For example, we started a nuisance ordinance that gives residents 10 days to clean up their properties in cases where owners of homes fail to maintain them.” To help older residents who can’t keep up, Callahan recruits young-and-able volunteers.
As the older homes turn over, Callahan tells the residents, “You have two choices. You can leave for better neighborhoods and let problems like gangs come in. Or, you can stay here and do something about it.”
To balance its residential growth with a stronger retail/commercial tax base, the village hired Grill in January. As he courts potential employers, Grill says he’s considering residents’ needs. “We haven’t even had a chance to survey the residents yet,” he says. “But they are telling us what they want, such as more grocery stores and restaurants.” Now, new commercial residents including Walgreens and Menard’s (under construction) join the roster of old-timers such as McWhorter Technologies and Otto Engineering Inc.
Grill’s guidebook is the village’s 1998 comprehensive plan, which cites the need for business recruitment and retention as the village continues to morph from rural to suburban and the center of town slides to the west. It identifies the need to maintain the older commercial districts including the Meadowdale Shopping Center, while nurturing the new Randall Road corridor, where 120 acres of commercially zoned land remain unsold. Developed, the corridor will be one of the last links of a retail chain stretching from Algonquin to Batavia.
For those who don’t necessarily want a new home, Carpentersville’s residential real estate listings run the gamut, although the 3-bedroom ranch is still king. Recent sales include a small, ’50s ranch on a slab for $100,000; a 5-year-old, 3-bedroom ranch for $150,000; and a 5-year-old, 5-bedroom, custom home on a half acre for $500,000. The demand exceeds the supply of Victorian fixer-uppers in Old Town.
Most of Carpentersville is in School District 300 (Carpentersville/Dundee), which also spills into parts of Algonquin, Lake in the Hills, Hampshire and Sleepy Hollow. Like most of the Fox Valley school districts, it is bursting at the seams. In the last 10 years, its student population has swollen to 16,041 from 10,818. But, voters have elected to keep their property taxes in check instead of building new schools. Three referendums have failed in the last two years.
Children at the northeast end of Carpentersville attend schools in the Barrington Community Unit School District 220, which has two schools in Carpentersville.
Carpentersville falls within the Dundee Township Public Library District, which maintains its stacks in East Dundee.
All of Carpentersville falls into the Elgin Community College District, which also offers satellite courses at area high schools. ECC doubles as a cultural center, hosting frequent art shows and musical and dance performances. In 2000, its marquee will feature the Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Celtic Fiddle Fest, “Pump Boys and Dinettes” and the Jazz Fest 2000. Other nearby recreational amenities include the Hemmens Cultural Center in Elgin, and Santa’s Village in East Dundee.
Carpentersville is within the Dundee Township Park District, which operates the Dolphin Cove Water Park, Randall Oaks Petting Park and Petting Zoo, Randall Oaks Golf Club and the Bonnie Dundee Golf Club.
Joggers and bicyclists enjoy the Fox River Trail, which follows the river through town and connects with the Prairie Trail in Algonquin.
Kane County property taxes in Carpentersville run about $4,500 a year for a $200,000 home.
As Carpentersville takes its second giant step, city officials anticipate some growing pains and, no doubt, residents can expect property taxes to inflate to cover new schools. But, say Callahan and Grill, it is growing without opposition for the most part. “There are those people, of course, who want the door closed behind them,” says Grill. “But most people are looking forward with a controlled-growth instead of an anti-growth attitude. And, I don’t hear any farmers saying they’re upset about the money they’re making selling their land.”
