When the decision-makers at Vernon Hills-based Washburn International Inc. decided that their operations in Chicago and Elkhart, Ind., needed to be consolidated with the home office, they knew they wouldn’t have to go far to find new space.
It didn’t take long for Washburn to find its way to a former picture-frame factory on the southern fringe of downtown Mundelein. The 130,000-square-foot Prairie-style building was a perfect match for the company’s business of building Washburn guitars, Randall amplifiers and SoundTech sound equipment. The building sits on 17 acres, most of which is undeveloped.
“At this facility we can be pretty certain that we’ll never have to move again because we can always expand right here,” said Larry English, Washburn’s vice president for manufacturing. “We’ve also had a lot of interaction with the people at the Village Hall, and they’re very positive, approachable people. It’s unusual for a manufacturing firm to locate across the street from a residential area and get such a warm welcome from the community.”
In the demographic center of Lake County, Libertyville, Mundelein and Vernon Hills host more than 30,000 jobs and aren’t at a loss for commercial development. Parts of Libertyville and Mundelein, fairly old communities, are even ripe for redevelopment.
The area’s diverse economic climate features a full range of retail, commercial and manufacturing businesses that receive enthusiastic support from municipal leaders and from the area residents who patronize them and snap up the jobs they offer.
Libertyville, Mundelein and Vernon Hills have become known as the Tri-Town Area. Their village boards regularly consult one another on issues of mutual concern–a fairly rare twist in a suburban environment in which many towns choose to see their neighbors as fierce competitors for people, jobs and, most importantly, tax revenues.
The three towns even support a joint chamber of commerce, the Green Oaks Libertyville Mundelein Vernon Hills Chamber of Commerce. Green Oaks, a hamlet of about 3,000 on the northeast side of Libertyville, was added to the chamber last year after it annexed part of Rondout, an unincorporated industrial community to the east.
With more than 750 members, the GLMV Chamber of Commerce, as it’s known, is the largest in Lake County and the fifth largest in the state. It moved from old quarters on Milwaukee Avenue in Libertyville to a new, larger office down the street over the summer.
“When there’s a common cause here, whether it’s about business or residential issues, the people really come together to make things happen,” said Dwight Houchins, the chamber’s executive director, taking a break from hanging pictures in the new office this summer. “We have a balanced economy of retail, commercial and manufacturing, and we have people who have a real interest in the community and the time and money to make things happen.”
The area now occupied by the three towns was home to Potawatomi Indians, who were attracted to the area for its abundant wildlife, fresh water provided by numerous small lakes and the Des Plaines River, which runs to the east. French fur traders paddled their way through the region in the 1600s, trading with the Potowatami and establishing small settlements. This heritage is kept alive today in numerous programs offered by the Lake County Forest Preserve District, such as historical programs on Indian lore and canoe trips along the waterways on which French fur trappers traveled.
Libertyville, whose population was estimated at 19,976 in 1998, according to the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission, was first incorporated as Independence Grove in 1836. It served as the seat of Lake County from the county’s incorporation in 1839 until 1841, when capital status was moved to the larger town of Little Fort, which changed its name to Waukegan in 1859.
What is now Mundelein gained its first permanent European settlers in 1835. The English immigrants called their town Mechanics Grove, a name reflected in one of the elementary schools now in the village. Residents gave their town several names over the years, including Holcomb, Rockefeller and Area before settling on Mundelein in 1924. The name honors Cardinal George Mundelein, the Chicago archbishop who authorized the construction of St. Mary’s of the Lake Seminary in 1924, a local institution. With 28,012 residents as of a 1997 special census, Mundelein now ranks as the fourth-largest city in Lake County.
In contrast to its neighbors, Vernon Hills is pure postwar suburbia. Incorporated in 1958, Vernon Hills fills the gap between Mundelein on the west and Libertyville on the northeast. Its growth has been rapid, mushrooming from an incomplete 125-house subdivision with 117 residents to 18,441 residents by 1998, according to NIPC.
“We moved here eight years ago and moved again six months ago, but we stayed in Vernon Hills,” said Dawn Krippinger, 39, while attending an orientation course for parents who have children enrolled in the Vernon Hills Park District day camp programs. “There are a lot of good people here. We’re pretty committed to Vernon Hills.”
The burgeoning collection of subdivisions found its niche in the local economy in 1973 with the opening of Hawthorn Center, a regional mall at Illinois Highways 60 and 21, or Townline Road and Milwaukee Avenue as they’re known locally.
The coming of the mall spurred commercial development nearby, particularly west toward Mundelein along Illinois 60, where there are few undeveloped gaps between the two towns. Development is now pushing south along Milwaukee Avenue and has in recent years attracted the headquarters of Computer Discount Warehouse and the new Vernon Hills High School.
“Everything grows out of our mall,” said Neil Goldberg, assistant manager of Hawthorn Center and a lifelong resident of Lake County. “This is a central location, a meeting place for lots of people.”
Libertyville and Mundelein, by comparison, have traditional downtowns that were meeting places long before the enclosed shopping mall joined the suburban landscape. Libertyville’s downtown strip along Milwaukee Avenue is not only popular with residents, it’s famous among city planners and economic development specialists.
The reason is the MainStreet program, an economic development program fostered by the state and by the national MainStreet USA program, aims to provide towns with the tools and expertise to redevelop their old city centers by retaining businesses and attracting new ones.
“We couldn’t do this without the support of the village government,” said Carolyn Dellutri, executive director of Libertyville’s 11-year-old MainStreet program since last year. “People like this area because when they walk into a store or a restaurant they often deal directly with the owners. They can also run a lot of errands and only have to park the car once. I tell my friends in Chicago that I don’t need a car in Libertyville either, because I can walk everywhere here too.”
The downtown strip has also retained its postcard-like ambience through an assertive historical preservation ordinance and widely supported efforts to preserve local landmarks like the Cook Mansion, which sits in Cook Memorial Park, Libertyville’s town square.
“They have little festivals and farmer’s markets here,” said Libertyville resident Tara Pakosta, 29, while strolling through the park on a summer evening with her husband, Michael, 47, and their infant daughter, Savannah. “On nice nights you can walk out here and get a coffee or a beer. It’s a quiet area, but there’s also a lot to do here.”
John Maguire is Dellutri’s counterpart at Mundelein MainStreet. He’s glad to have a textbook example of a MainStreet program so close to home, and is confident that Mundelein, his hometown, can achieve a similar result with its program, which was inaugurated in 1998.
The biggest challenge faced by Mundelein is in defining its downtown, Maguire said. Unlike Libertyville’s Milwaukee Avenue strip, Mundelein’s old commercial district is spread out over several blocks, some of them irregularly shaped, in the vicinity of Hawley Street, Lake Street and Seymour Avenue.
“We’re working on bringing high-density residential development to downtown to give it the 24-hour population that downtowns need to be successful,” Maguire said. “Downtowns are about warm and fuzzy feelings and places where people can rub shoulders with their neighbors. It’s a proven formula and it’s the way a lot of towns are going because their residents like it.”
Growth in the Tri-Town Area has also brought a new diversity, especially to Mundelein. While Libertyville and Vernon Hills have fairly small minority populations, Mundelein’s population is about 18 percent Hispanic, village officials said.
Clustered mostly on the west side of the village, and especially near Diamond Lake, an unincorporated area around a lake of the same name, Mundelein’s Hispanic residents have followed in the footsteps of European immigrants, not just by buying homes, but also by establishing businesses, such as restaurants and grocery stores that cater to the Hispanic market.
“It’s nice here in Mundelein,” said Ruben Espinoza, 35, a Mexican immigrant who came five years ago by way of Chicago. Espinoza and his three children–Chanel, 8, Isiah, 6, and Shaina, 5–were enjoying a breezy evening at the beach at Diamond Lake, operated by the Mundelein Park District.
“We live just a few blocks from the beach, and my kids do a lot of other things with the Park District,” Espinoza said. “We have a lot in Mundelein. And what we don’t have, we have in Libertyville or Vernon Hills, which is very convenient. We have everything within about 10 minutes of here.”
