As a new century begins, Oak Brook and Hinsdale, like older affluent Chicago suburbs before them, have allowed developers to exhaust virtually all available land in the two communities.
Oak Brook has just one 78-lot, 35-acre subdivision still under construction. All other home construction consists of single-lot construction in scattered locations, including occasional teardowns.
In Hinsdale, new housing construction is limited to teardowns and replacement housing. There is no buildable land available in town and little redevelopment, even in downtown Hinsdale, for multi-unit dwellings. That stands in sharp contrast to other DuPage County communities such as Glen Ellyn, Elmhurst, Naperville and Wheaton, where redevelopment projects increasingly bring homeowners into new condominium buildings in their downtowns.
“The percentage of our town that is built out is like Ivory soap,” quipped Hinsdale Assistant Village Manager Bo Proczko. “It’s 99.9 percent. We just don’t have those multi-acre vacant tracts sitting around doing nothing.”
Proczko said that despite the closing of the Hinsdale Theater, the village’s downtown has thrived, allowing Hinsdale’s leaders to keep their hands off downtown. Community-backed redevelopment projects have taken place in other suburban towns such as Wheaton.
“I think historically we’ve been very fortunate, because we’ve had a thriving downtown with a loyal clientele,” Proczko said. “We draw customers from a wide area. And even though storefronts turn over, one business moves out and another moves in. There seems to be a desire for businesses to locate here.”
The village issued 114 new-construction permits and 114 demolition permits last year, Proczko said. Although the new-construction permits are not one-for-one replacements for the 114 homes receiving demolition permits, the similarity in numbers reflects the fact that all demolition permits were for teardowns, Proczko said.
“There clearly is a high desire to live in Hinsdale,” Village President Bill Whitney said. “There also is a lot of rehabbing of existing homes. We’ve found that there’s a greater number of rehabs going on every year than teardowns, and that’s really a function of the fact that we have an established housing base. We’re 125 years old, and some of our homes get to the point where something has to be done to them.”
As far as affordable housing is concerned, Whitney said that although the issue remains “a concern,” village leaders haven’t dealt with it in any formal way.
Hinsdale’s single-family home values have remained robust, according to local real estate agents. Of the 450 single-family houses in Hinsdale that were listed with the DuPage Multiple Listing Service of Northern Illinois from the start of 1999 to mid-January, the average listing price was $585,698, said Linda Latsko, an agent with Coldwell Banker’s Hinsdale office. The houses’ average market time was 51 days, she said.
Of those 450 homes, 43 had a listing price of $1 million or above, said Latsko, who noted the divergence in average market time between the homes on either side of that threshold. Homes listed for $1 million or more had an average market time of 82 days, while those listed for less than $1 million were on the market for an average of 47 days, she said.
By mid-January the average price of the 141 actively listed homes in Hinsdale had shot up to $851,037, Latsko said, with 41 of those houses listed at $1 million or more.
“You can bet a lot of those houses listed for over $1 million are new construction,” said Latsko, a Hinsdale native and Hinsdale Central High School graduate who has been an agent for six years.
“There are a lot of people within the community who up-size because they need a bigger house but who don’t want to leave Hinsdale,” she said. “And the transferees that we work with seem very concerned with the quality of our school districts.”
Local home builder James McNaughton, who has been a major player in constructing teardown replacements, said he foresees Hinsdale remaining a desired address whether the economy is strong or not.
“Hinsdale’s always going to sell, even when times are tougher, simply because of its desirability,” said McNaughton, a Hinsdale resident. “It has the schools, the downtown and the quaintness. And there are a lot of terrific older homes in town that are going to continue to sell.
“The opportunities for new construction come from the fact that some people just don’t want the older home. They want the deep basements, the 9-foot and 10-foot first-floor ceilings and the extra bath. They want to be the first-time buyer. Most of my clientele, who are between the ages of 35 and 45, want new.”
In Oak Brook, developer Callaghan Associates is developing the final vacant tract of any size in town into a single-family development designed for people 55 and older. Construction recently began on the gated 78-lot Forest Gate subdivision, at the northeast corner of Oak Brook Road (31st Street) and Illinois Highway 83. As of mid-January, five building permits had been issued in the development, where single-family homes are expected to cost $750,000 to $880,000.
The property originally was owned by village founder Paul Butler, and later by Waste Management’s employee pension fund portfolio, before it was sold to Callaghan Associates, company official Dan Callaghan said. In 1998, at the Village Board’s request, Callaghan and his father, Dave Callaghan, agreed to a restriction that would require 80 percent of the families buying homes in Forest Gate to have at least one member age 55 or older.
“Like so many affluent communities (such as) Burr Ridge, Barrington and Lake Forest, Oak Brook didn’t have single-family housing that could allow an affluent resident to literally move from a 10,000-square-foot house to a 3,300-square-foot home,” Dan Callaghan said. “This allows people who’ve lived here for 20 to 25 years–but who want to stay in a single-family house–to stay in Oak Brook. And the density is 2.2 units per acre, which is actually even less than some single-family developments.”
Callaghan said the French country-design single-family homes in Forest Gate cater to a grayer population by having master bedrooms on the first floor. Two of the six models are ranches, and the other four models have 1 1/2 stories, he said. Other amenities include an option for a three-car garage, 10-foot ceilings, 8-foot doorways, oak floors, deluxe baths, screened porches, custom cabinetry and pond views for all but 15 of the lots.
Though the Forest Gate plan ran into opposition from residents in the nearby Hunter Trails neighborhood, construction began recently, and there are no prospects for any more large-scale developments to come before village officials.
Outside of the Forest Gate project, there has been very little residential development in Oak Brook, said Robert Kallien Jr., community development director.
“There’s a house here or a house there, but really all we’re seeing are in-fill developments and teardowns,” he said.
One other proposed single-family development just outside Oak Brook’s boundaries, the single-family 22-lot Sanctuary development at the southwest corner of the East-West Tollway and Meyers Road, has stalled since the death of its developer, Thomas Shannon, Village President Karen Bushy said. The 14-acre project, which was proposed in 1996 and 1997, would have carried an Oak Brook address.
Demand for an Oak Brook address remains heavy, according to local listing agents. Latsko said that of the 112 single-family houses in Oak Brook that had been listed with the multiple listing service from the start of 1999 through mid-January, the average listing price was $824,934, with an average market time of 60 days. Of those houses, 26 were listed for $1 million or more, with an average market time of 67 days, she said.
By mid-January, the average listing price of the 56 actively listed houses had shot up to $1,010,792. However, just 14 of the 56 were listed for more than $1 million, suggesting that some of the 14 houses were listed for far more than $1 million.
