They are like twins in many ways, fraternal if not quite identical.
And Orland Park and Tinley Park, like most twins, have a lot in common.
Both have roughly similar demographics, comparable histories and virtually identical growth strategies. Together they not only epitomize the economic and population booms that have engulfed the southwest suburban area over the last two decades, but also serve as the engine behind much of the region’s growth.
They are the focal point of the extraordinary transformation of the southwest suburban area’s once predominantly rural landscape into a sea of subdivisions and a kaleidoscope of shopping malls, automobile dealerships, gas stations and fast-food restaurants.
“Outside the city of Chicago, the metropolitan area is made up of clusters and cores around which people orient their lives. For the southwest suburban area, the hub, without question, is Orland Park and Tinley Park,” says Larry McClellan, a historian and executive director of Governors State University’s South Metropolitan Regional Leadership Center, a policy group that concentrates on regional issues such as growth.
“They are the Schaumburg and Oak Brook of the southwest suburban region,” says Annette Rogers, manager of economic development for the Chicago Southland Chamber of Commerce, based in Homewood.
Like their past and present, Orland and Tinley’s futures also are intertwined. As they age, both will either continue to prosper under enlightened growth strategies or succumb to the ravages of overgrowth.
There are signs–traffic congestion, overcrowded schools, overtaxed recreational facilities and infrastructure, a possible overabundance of shopping malls–that the latter might prove to be the case.
Moreover, according to regional planners, the epicenter for residential and commercial development in the southwest suburbs appears to be moving away from the two communities, westward out by Joliet and into eastern Kendall County.
Still, Orland Park and Tinley Park continue to be a magnet for young families migrating from Chicago and the older south and southwest inner-ring suburbs that surround the city.
In addition, shopping center developers and home builders continue to salivate at the sight of undeveloped or underdeveloped parcels within and adjacent to the two communities, seeing a market for yet more homes and retail stores amid what some view as a slowly growing glut of houses and retail establishments.
“Both suburbs will continue to grow because there is additional open land available to the south, in the case of Tinley Park, and to the south and west in Orland’s case,” McClellan said.
For those born in the last half of the 20th Century, it’s hard to imagine that Orland Park and Tinley Park have rich histories dating back hundreds of years, when the land on which shopping centers, car dealerships and subdivisions now stand was inhabited by members of the Potawatomi, Fox, Sac and other Indian tribes.
The Township of Orland was organized in 1850. The Village of Orland, centered along the Wabash Railroad line that came through the area in 1879, was incorporated in 1894. Its population was a mere 300 people, about the same number of people who live in just one of the suburb’s dozens of subdivisions today.
Tinley Park has a similar history. Incorporated in 1892 when its population hit 200, it too centered around the railroad (Samuel Tinley was the first stationmaster assigned to the town’s depot) and traces its roots to the early 1800s, when it was known as the Town of Bremen (after the town of Bremen in Germany). The principal activity in old Tinley Park, as in Orland, was farming, chicken farming to be exact. In fact, as late as the 1920s, the town lured residents with the promise of free coops.
The phenomenal growth experienced by Tinley Park and Orland Park over the last couple of decades pretty much obscured the history of both communities. Now, however, both are actively working to rediscover and promote their histories and even restore some of the charm and ambience.
Orland Park recently approved ordinances making it easier for residents to build front porches, the kind of porches that once enhanced the wooden-frame homes that dominated the village in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The town also is actively improving on and promoting its historic district, a five-block-square area of century-old homes, shops, antique stores and a museum bounded by 143rd Street on the north, 144th Place on the south, West Avenue on the west and Beacon Avenue on the east.
Tinley Park is in the midst of restoring and revitalizing its original commercial center along Oak Park Avenue between 167th and 175th Streets. The $5.5 million project is scheduled to be completed by 2003.
In the case of both communities, according to local officials, the historic preservation and revitalization efforts are designed to give residents a sense of place, a feeling of unity and an understanding that life existed and even thrived long before malls and fast-food restaurants made their appearance.
Although Tinley Park and Orland Park experienced steady growth from early on in the 20th Century, both pretty much retained their small-town, rural character until the mid-1950s, when the development boom began in earnest.
As the interstate highway system took shape in the Chicago area and white families began leaving Chicago’s racially and economically changing neighborhoods, residential developers began rapidly acquiring the farmland that surrounded the village centers of Tinley and Orland and started building homes at an unprecedented rate to accommodate the waves of urban refugees.
As a result, the populations of Orland Park and Tinley Park quickly soared–from 788 in 1950 to 6,400 in 1970 in Orland’s case, and from 2,300 to 12,400 in the case of Tinley Park, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. Since 1970, the population of both communities has ballooned to about 50,000 apiece. And population projections by the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission suggest that both communities could approach 70,000 by 2020 as the boundaries spread increasingly into neighboring Will County.
“In terms of numbers, the population growth of both suburbs has been dramatic,” McClellan said. “The two communities. . .certainly have grown up. Initially, the growth was due to the fact that people could commute by train to downtown Chicago from both communities. Since World War II, however, the expansion has been fueled by the automobile.”
With the rise in population came commercial development, the most significant of which were the Orland Square mall at 151st Street and La Grange Road in Orland Park and the Brementowne Mall at 159th Street and Oak Park Avenue in Tinley Park.
Orland Square especially has had a dynamic impact on Orland Park and neighboring Tinley. Since it opened in 1975, retail development within the two suburbs has spread as fast as dandelions across a summer lawn.
With Orland Square, the recently refurbished Orland Park Place shopping center and a host of smaller malls concentrated along La Grange Road, Orland Park has the edge over Tinley Park when it comes to shopping centers. Tinley, however, is quickly becoming the southwest suburbs’ entertainment center. Tinley Park in recent years has become home to the New World Music Theatre, a visual arts center, and the largest Oktoberfest this side of the Wisconsin border. In addition, a convention center is under construction, along with a Holiday Inn.
“Clearly, both have had an enormous impact economically on the south and southwest suburban area,” said Ed Paesel, interim executive director of the South Suburban Mayors and Managers Association, an umbrella group representing 38 communities in the area, including Tinley and Orland.
“The explosion of commercial development in Orland, especially, has been phenomenal over the last 10 years, making the Orland-Tinley area one of the top major trade areas in the Chicago region. Meanwhile, the opening of the World Music Theatre has brought world-class entertainment to the area, and the completion of the convention center will, for the first time, make the area competitive with other suburban areas in attracting conventions, exhibitions, business meetings and the like.”
Maureen Wright, Orland Park’s economic development director, said that just as people in the south suburbs will go to Naperville, Oak Brook, downtown Chicago, Schaumburg and Long Grove for a day trip or a night out, she’d like to see people from the western and northern suburbs and Chicago make the trip to Orland Park.
“If we work hard, it’s a very distinct possibility that we could make Orland Park a destination place,” she said. “I think (restaurant) developers are looking at population and disposable income (in deciding where to do business). They see that the market is here and it has been here for several years.”
The question facing both towns is just how much more development they can handle before the negative impacts of growth outweigh the attributes that attracted residents to the area in the first place.
“Unfortunately, growth is both good and bad,” says Orland Park Mayor Dan McLaughlin. “The growth means that the community is successful, active, progressing, improving. But with it come the problems of traffic congestion and the impact on services.”
In Orland Park, the question of growth centers on whether there should be even more retail development. The village is debating the merits of allowing yet another shopping mall to be built within the village, a 460,000-square-foot complex, at 143rd Street and La Grange Road. Some residents are angered by the proposal, pointing out that if it would only add to an already horrendous traffic bottleneck along 143rd and La Grange. On the other hand, other residents contend it will be a plus to the village, further increasing the tax base.
Both Orland and Tinley would like to see a greater diversification of their tax and employment bases by developing their land along Interstate Highway 80 into a corridor of high-tech and light manufacturing industries and office complexes. Unfortunately, the geography of the southwest suburbs is not well suited for any extensive high-tech development or corporate office construction, local officials, developers and regional planners point out. Because the road network is oriented to the north and west and Chicago’s international airport is located to the northwest, high-tech and suburban office development in the region has tended to migrate west to DuPage County and north to Lake County, they note.
That could change, however, if a new airport were built in the south or southwest suburbs, local officials say.
Another issue facing both suburbs is how much open space–one of the key attributes that attracted residents to the area–should be retained. It’s an issue both are grappling with and will continue to agonize over for years to come.
For now, the futures of both Orland Park and Tinley Park appear bright. Officials in both communities realize that growth, while healthy, must be kept in check if their communities’ quality of life and property values are to be retained.
“Both suburbs today have strong municipal staffs who are keeping close tabs on growth to make sure that future growth is smart growth and not just growth for growth’s sake,” McClellan said. “That wasn’t always the case in the past.”
