Forty-two years ago, underneath the umbrella of an oak tree’s branches on the edge of a dairy farm, Ralph Dawson asked his wife Linda to marry him.
Dawson, now 71 and a Crystal Lake council member, remembered the tree recently as he reviewed a packet of housing plans for an upcoming council meeting. How ironic, he thought, that he was being asked to approve plans that would destroy his cherished tree and surrounding fields to make room for another subdivision.
Before making his decision, Dawson, his wife beside him, strolled through the former farm where Linda grew up, found the tree and decided to let the past go.
“You can’t hold back,” said Dawson, who eventually voted to approve the subdivision plans. “Progress is here. Otherwise none of us would be here if everybody kept everybody else out.”
Dawson’s experience is symbolic of what Crystal Lake has become in recent decades: A city in constant transformation.
Three decades ago, Crystal Lake’s population was just under 15,000. It had a volunteer Fire Department, a paid police force of 11 officers and no daily newspaper.
“Half the kids I went to school with came to school right off the farm from milking,” Dawson recalled.
City officials estimate this year’s census will show that McHenry County’s largest city will have reached nearly 40,000 residents.
Many residents say they can’t remember a time when the city wasn’t under some kind of construction, whether it was subdivisions and shopping centers being built or roads being widened.
The numbers are impressive: 3,360 single-family homes and 900 multifamily units added since 1990; 127 new commercial buildings; more than 1,000 commercial buildings remodeled or expanded. Twenty-four industrial buildings also have been built and 294 others expanded or remodeled.
The pace of new-home construction has slowed from its peak of 507 a decade ago. But last year was still strong with 233 homes and approximately 50 commercial buildings being built.
The influx of residents forced Crystal Lake to grow up, from a rural town dotted with farms to a city that has learned to embrace development while maintaining its charm.
The city operates under a council-city manager form of government. Residents elect a mayor every four years and six City Council representatives from the community at large, who also serve four-year terms.
Those leaders, through the years, tackled issues that have often been divisive: traffic congestion, annexation, lack of low-income housing and the protection of the city’s 240-acre namesake lake, to name a few. Growth has been the overall thread.
“The one thing that is a very good measure of how smart growth is or how well planned is whether the infrastructure is able to keep up with growth,” Crystal Lake Mayor Aaron Shepley said. “There are a number of municipalities in McHenry County with which the infrastructure has not kept pace with development and there are decreased services in terms of water or sewer services.
“It’s a healthy sign for a community if the infrastructure is ahead of the game and ours clearly is. We’re growing, but we have prepared for it.”
In the past four years, U.S. Highway 14 through Crystal Lake has become the retail hub of McHenry County that has attracted major department chain stores, restaurants and national bookstores that offer overstuffed chairs and lattes.
Crystal Lake pulls in more sales tax than any city in the county–estimated at $9.2 million this year.
Meanwhile, Crystal Lake’s historic downtown district has blossomed into a quaint, small-town shopping area beautified with street lamps, brick walkways and landscaped corners.
Shepley now lives about two blocks from his boyhood home.
“Having grown up here, I’ve seen it in all stages of its growth,” Shepley said. “I think it would be fair to say that Crystal Lake has the best of all worlds. We do have the growth but it’s been nice growth and it has made a lot of amenities, services and conveniences available to Crystal Lake residents and the people of McHenry County.”
The value of that service has not been lost on competitive communities.
McHenry’s Plan Commission last month approved preliminary plans for McHenry Towne Center.
The 95-acre commercial development along Illinois Highway 31 would include stores such as Home Depot, Meijer and Kohl’s.
The 580,000 square feet of commercial development, proposed by Hoffman Estates-based Rubloff Development Company, would be a direct competitor to U.S. 14’s strip of big box department stores.
In fact, many of the stores will be repeats of what is in Crystal Lake. Officials in both towns and for the stores said the demand in Crystal Lake helped make the case for the McHenry locations.
While Crystal Lake has become a more expensive place to live–most of the new housing is in the higher price bracket–it remains a draw for young families with children.
Its proximity to Interstate Highway 90 and the availability of the Metra commuter line is enticing, but Shepley believes it is the school system that convinces people to move to Crystal Lake.
“Our school system, notwithstanding the growth, has struggled at times but managed to keep its head above water trying to make ends meet while at the same time remaining miles ahead in the type of education we provide to our kids,” he said. “That has been a constant.”
Going into this year, Community High School District 155 has 5,550 students and a budget of $54.9 million.
The system is fed primarily by Crystal Lake Community Consolidated District 47, which has 8,500 students this year. Prairie Grove School District 46, with an enrollment of 1,010, also sends students to the high schools.
When Tina Griffith was a teenager in Crystal Lake, there was only one high school and a handful of elementary schools. Today, Crystal Lake has four high schools, eight elementary schools and three junior high schools.
“If I would define it, I would say it is a growing community,” said Griffith, 35. “It’s definitely grown up a lot since I was young.”
And although Griffith moved to Woodstock in recent years because of the traffic in Crystal Lake, she said, “It’ll always be home.”
Shepley said there are efforts to combat the traffic problems.
He points to attempts to alleviate some traffic jams like a $4.2 million intersection widening at U.S. 14 and Main Street that is to be completed next year. That project includes a tunnel to allow pedestrians and bikers to pass without facing traffic.
Further east work was completed recently on the intersection of U.S. 14 and Illinois 31 to improve traffic at that juncture as well.
“We can mitigate traffic, but we won’t ever eliminate it,” he said. “It’s an inevitable byproduct of the commercial fortunes we enjoy.”
Since most of the population boom occurred in the late 1970s and early ’80s and has more recently leveled off, Crystal Lake’s city leaders have a little breathing room as they consider the future.
Besides the issues of growth that typically crowd City Council’s agenda, Shepley said he is keeping an eye on some simple issues, such as building a greater consciousness among residents to keep their property well kept.
“It’s like a family growing up,” Shepley said.
