People flock to Naperville because of what it has to offer.
It’s a place with a robust economy in the prosperous western suburbs, where high-tech jobs are plentiful along the booming East-West corporate corridor.
Highly educated parents there send their children to strong schools in preparation for highly acclaimed colleges.
Some land is still available there, development continues to soar and sprawling upscale subdivisions are filling up the remaining open patches of farmland left along its southwestern border.
It’s a place where people want to live.
Community resources in this western suburb flow aplenty. Highly ranked schools, an active Park District and an acclaimed library system are all synonymous with an active lifestyle.
“People are working full time,” said Lynne Walsh, business development specialist at Edward Hospital. “They are taking their kids to soccer practice. They are joining committees. These are people who are not sitting home and reading a book.”
Among the destinations for those busy families is one of Naperville’s prime cultural resources, the Naper Settlement. It features 26 historic buildings on 13 acres and serves 100,000 visitors a year, including 40,000 schoolchildren. The settlement depicts life in Naperville from its beginnings in 1831 to the modern era.
“All 2nd and 4th graders from Naperville go to the settlement to see what pioneer life was like,” said Sharon Wall, principal of Naper Elementary School, Naperville. “It brings the past to life for the children, and it is a tremendous community resource.”
In many ways, Naperville mirrors the counties in which it is situated.
DuPage County’s population is expected to jump 28 percent, to almost 1 million, by 2020. The 1990 census registered the county’s population at 781,000. Will County’s population is projected to jump from 357,000 to between 722,000 and 805,000 during that same period, or 102 to 125 percent, according to estimates by the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission.
Naperville’s population is expected to grow by 82 percent. The boundary between the two counties is around 87th Street in Naperville.
The population in Naperville is expected to reach more than 155,000 by 2020. The 1990 census placed the city’s population at 85,000, and the latest city estimates say it has reached 134,500.
But growth can have its disadvantages.
“It’s difficult to coordinate the resources and get the information out to the right people about those resources,” said Dennise Vaughn, administrative director of planning and business development for Edward Hospital and a leader in developing health resources for the community. “As Naperville grows, people aren’t aware of what is here.”
In the fall, Edward and United Way officials in Naperville compiled survey results from a yearlong study and identified six main health and human service needs that are of concern to residents. Some of those needs are met better than others, according to the survey results.
Some of the concerns, such as mental health, coronary heart disease and women’s health issues, are common needs throughout DuPage County. Others, such as limited access to public transportation, senior services and affordable day care, are specific concerns of Naperville residents.
As families pour into Naperville and the population swells, some say the city’s ample resources can be stretched and left scrambling to catch up. City officials hope to use the survey findings to tailor the available resources and fill in the gaps as growth continues.
“The growth is a major challenge for Naperville, and yet growth is an opportunity,” said Candace King, executive director of the DuPage Federation of Human Services Reform, a private, non-profit advisory council. “When growth is taking place, it means there is a healthy economy and there is an opportunity for a community to get out ahead of its issues, define what kind of community they want and plan for it.”
City officials will devise task forces in the spring to address each issue and help pull together any fragmented resources.
“Overall Naperville has many more strengths than it does liabilities,” King said. “The problems are problems of affluence. Child care is in short supply because there are a lot of working mothers who need it. Housing prices are going up so it is more difficult to afford it.”
Projections show that Naperville’s population will continue to fill out the southwest region of the city in the next five years. Sprawling subdivisions and office campuses will be built, but affordable housing will continue to be scarce and companies will struggle to find the moderately skilled, middle-class workers who are the core of their workforce.
“The community includes not just the people who live there but the people who run the cash registers [and] clean the hotels and office buildings,” King said. “And those folks for the most part can’t afford to live there.”
As developers compete for the remaining valuable space left in the city and land prices continue to escalate, a lack of affordable housing is something community leaders constantly grapple with.
A DuPage Mayors and Managers Conference report based on 1990 census data estimates that 11 percent of the city’s residents have annual household income of less than $25,000.
“I truthfully don’t know where those families are living, because the need for subsidized housing is very high,” King said.
The city reported having only 372 subsidized units available, according to the survey.
Michael Kamon is trying to get a better handle on this issue. The Community Development Block Grant administrator for the city has sent out a survey to every household in Naperville inquiring about the need for affordable housing, particularly for seniors.
“I’m receiving calls all the time for apartment units that are more affordable, and it’s not just for seniors,” he said.
The data, which will be compiled in the spring, also will help determine the need for nursing home facilities, in-home medical care and delivered meals, public transportation for seniors, and other services.
Kamon said the city’s special census in 1994 reported 6,000 seniors, but that number has grown and he is hoping the survey results will give a more accurate account of the population and its needs.
A portion of the $450,000 in federally funded block grants earmarked for 2001 will go toward senior services in the city.
“I need to get a better idea of their needs, and it’s difficult for me to plan how to spend the funds if I’m unclear what type of services they need,” Kamon said.
“A real human services challenge is supporting the working poor, and that is even more true in Naperville,” King said. “Affording housing, child care and transportation are major challenges.”
Child care and public transportation rounded out the major concerns of residents in the city’s health and human-needs assessment.
A lack of public transportation for seniors and the disabled was identified as a critical concern to residents, according to the assessment. Only half of the people needing public transportation or support programs for seniors were able to obtain those services, and one-third of them were not satisfied with the service. The city has Pace bus service, but most of the routes provide service on weekdays during rush hour.
Seniors also have access to Pace Dial-A-Ride buses, which are sponsored by Lisle and Naperville Townships and the City of Naperville. The service is for residents 65 and older and costs $1.50 per ride. Residents must make reservations a day in advance.
The two buses are booked eight hours a day, said Ginnie Boyle, director of senior services for Naperville Township. “We probably could use a third bus, but it’s very expensive, so I don’t know if we can do it,” she said.
To supplement the bus service, Naperville Township began a senior taxi service in 1996 that allows seniors to ride for $2.50 per one-way trip, using a local cab company. The first year, about 90 seniors used the service each month. Now it’s up to 300 a month, Boyle said.
Seniors can find recreational programs at the Naperville Park District’s Alfred Rubin Riverwalk Community Center, 305 W. Jackson Ave. Activities at the senior center there, which is on the second floor, include seminars, mah-jongg, bridge clubs and drop-in painting sessions, where seniors are invited to draw, paint and socialize.
There also is a continuing concern over the availability of affordable day care and preschool services, although a high percentage of people reported being able to obtain acceptable care.
The request for those services topped the list of greatest needs in the community: About 34 percent of 775 residents who responded to a citywide survey during the summer that was part of the human needs assessment reported needing day care or preschool services.
Of those who reported that need, 89 percent were able to obtain the services, and 88 percent of those were satisfied with the care.
Among the preschools providing care in Naperville is Gan Yeladim Early Learning Center of Congregation Beth Shalom, where director and head teacher Susan Jensen believes in the idea of learning through play.
“There is too much emphasis on academics and getting ready so early,” she said. “Today’s kids are overstressed without enough unstructured playtime.”
A recent “pajama day,” where children joined assistant teacher Gail Butera in building bears out of construction paper circles, plastic eyeballs and colorful felt while dressed in their sleepwear, illustrated the point.
About 15 percent of the survey respondents reported needing before- and after-school care for their children. The demand has sparked the Heritage YMCA’s booming before- and after-school programs in recent years, said Patty Manser, associate executive director for the YMCA’s child development center.
The program, which started with 60 children at one site, has taken off in the last five years and now serves more than 800 children at the 32 public elementary schools in the Naperville area.
“As we’ve realized the need is out there, we’ve tried to fill the need more and more,” said Manser, who attributes the program’s success to the increased demand and the service’s convenience.
“Part of it is convenience,” she said. “And part of that convenience is that a parent has a younger child and a child in 5th grade and they are at different places. It’s availability, convenience and cost–it’s all of that mixed together.”
The program costs parents about $400 a month.
As in the rest of DuPage, coronary heart disease is the No. 1 cause of death in Naperville, resulting in half of all deaths. More than 22 percent of adults reported having high cholesterol, and 46 percent of adults and 8 percent of children are said to be overweight. More than 10 percent of adults and 8 percent of children eat fast food more than three times a week.
“Cardiovascular disease is the No. 1 health concern in the country, so it’s not that atypical,” Vaughn said. “All of us are sitting at our desks typing away.”
Edward Hospital offers comprehensive cardiac care, including screenings for heart disease, diagnostic procedures, surgery and cardiac rehabilitation. It has 52 cardiologists on staff and performs about 300 heart surgeries a year.
In 1999, Edward proposed a for-profit cardiac hospital that would be owned jointly by non-profit Edward and staff physicians. The proposal was rejected in June by the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board, and Edward officials have appealed the decision. But in November, Edward received approval from the board for a $44.9 million 71-bed expansion.
Edward also has been addressing women’s health issues, another concern highlighted in the health and human needs study. It made improvements in the obstetrics/gynecology area beginning about five years ago, opened women’s and children’s service areas in January 2000, and opened a pediatric emergency room last summer.
One of its programs is called Cradle Talk, in which parents of infants up to 6 months old gather each week to ask questions of nurses and guest speakers.
Anxiety and stress levels are increasing as people continue to live in a faster-paced society, and concerns of residents about mental health, including instances of depression, stress and anxiety, also followed nationwide patterns. A report issued last year by the U.S. surgeon general on the state of mental health nationwide found that one in five Americans suffers some sort of mental illness and that it is typically not treated.
“Medical research shows that incidence of mental illness does not vary among socioeconomic class,” said Bruce Anderson, vice president of Edward Hospital and chief executive officer of Linden Oaks Hospital at Edward, in Naperville. “There is just as much stress and anxiety among corporate America as there is among factory workers.
“But one of the most remarkable things about the Naperville survey is that the citizens of Naperville recognize this is an issue, because so often people sweep it under the rug,” Anderson said.
An estimated 29 percent of survey respondents reported needing family or individual counseling.
“What is so extraordinary about that is not that people need counseling, but that people are recognizing it and saying it openly,” Anderson said.
Linden Oaks has more than 100 psychologists, professional counselors, social workers and family therapists on staff, many of whom also have private practices in the area.
