It’s an idea that wasn’t always easy to sell, but today there are few communities not employing the three R’s of downtown revitalization.
This is especially noticeable in the western suburbs, where redevelopment, renovation and restoration are a common theme.
Pick any city or town in DuPage and Kane Counties–Aurora, Batavia, Geneva, St. Charles, Elmhurst, Glen Ellyn, Lisle, Lombard, Wheaton or any of their neighbors–and it’s virtually certain a downtown renaissance is in the works.
Every one of them has a mission statement touting its aim to attract new business, retain old business and be more resident-and-visitor friendly. These declarations mix narcissism, enthusiasm and competitive zeal in touting each town’s history and eagerness to capitalize on its economic and aesthetic assets.
“Downtown is like any other kind of shopping district,” said Anne Wollensak, economic development director in Wheaton. “It has to be managed, maintained and reinvested in to make sure spaces are occupied and businesses are healthy.
“It’s an ongoing strategy, much like that used by shopping centers. It isn’t for a single year, five years or more because it is not a process that has a finish.”
With condominiums and townhouses going up on the downtown’s west side and a legal battle over some vacant stores and the relocation of other businesses to expand a Jewel-Osco on the east side of the downtown area, Wollensak’s vision is 20-20: There is no end in sight.
Her views are similar to those of Karen Christensen, Aurora’s downtown/Riverwalk administrator, who added “there is no such thing as an overnight sensation in this business.”
“We went through what happened to every [other city] in Illinois: People started running to the mall and a lot of local employers were hurt and had to move to other places,” she said. “Things are [improving] now because 15 years ago folks sat down and said, ‘We’ve got to do something to save our city and its architectural history and uniqueness.’ We didn’t want to turn into a cookie cutter of every other place. Aurora is a city in its own right, and I think we are on our way back, big time.”
While traces of the lean years are still around, signs of progress are striking. Christensen said that not only was the Hollywood Casino, which opened in 1993, a “shot in the arm,” but the Paramount Theater, the North Island Apartments (originally the Aurora Hotel) and the 22-story Fox Island Place (formerly Leland Tower) are examples of the new downtown’s vitality.
The buzz of activity started in the mid-’80s after the city, in the throes of economic and employment decline, started offering developers tax incentives to revive business.
The results are indisputable: a 17-block downtown tax increment finance district (TIF) created in 1986 has almost tripled the downtown’s equalized assessed valuation to more than $21 million, according to Brian Caputo, city treasurer and finance director.
“The city has grown immensely,” he said, “and the downtown is just a piece of it.”
Assessed valuation throughout the city has skyrocketed from $830 million to almost $1.9 billion in the last decade, and the city’s ratio of bonded-debt to assessed-value is declining, he noted.
A second TIF was approved last year to redevelop the downtown’s core 40-acre area, also known RiverCity, he added. Proposed is a multipurpose arena, convention center, hotel, entertainment facilities and urban housing.
Aurora officials have said TIF-inspired investment could reach $450 million in the area. A cost analysis concluded that public investment for land purchase and cleanup, relocation of businesses and resident housing could exceed $82 million.
That’s just the beginning. An additional 130 acres in the south downtown area are ripe for redevelopment over the next two decades, they add.
In the last five years the city has invested “a substantial amount in infrastructure essentials,” such as paver-brick sidewalks, turn-of-the-last-century street lamps and a four-story parking garage to help rekindle interest in the city’s downtown, Christensen said.
An ongoing project since 1992 is the building of a river bank walkway called Foxwalk, which circles Stolp Island. A water-level trail system is planned that could be built over the next 15 years once it gets approval from the Army Corps of Engineers, she noted.
The centerpiece of this Fox River city’s downtown is Stolp Island, which has more than 30 buildings, including the bustling Paramount Theater and the 21-story Fox Island (formerly the Leland Tower) on Blues Street, which once was home to a recording studio.
Although downtown extends a few blocks east and west of the river, the island, all of which is on the National Register of Historic Places, is its core.
“One of the main benefits of historic designation is that [building] owners are eligible for a 20 percent tax credit for rehabilitation,” said Jan Mangers, director of the city’s Preservation Commission.
Built in 1917 as the city’s first skyscraper, the Aurora Hotel was rehabbed with this assistance in the mid-’90s into affordable housing for seniors, she said.
“We’ve embarked on a restoration program for the whole area,” Christensen said.
“I’d like to see many more independents,” she added, speaking of the types of business she wants to attract downtown. “They have their heart in the community. Their decision about what to carry and how to serve customers are not made in a corporate headquarters 2,000 miles away.
“I don’t want to knock those kinds of businesses,” she hastened to add, “because there’s a place for them, but I’m not completely convinced it’s in the downtown.”
Christensen’s downtown wish list is lengthy but among the “most needed” things in her mind are a larger full-service supermarket, a movie theater, a book and newspaper store, a few moderately priced restaurants.
There are an estimated 1,000 people living downtown, Christensen said, many in low and mid-rise buildings renovated for mixed-use.
“If you add this population to those who work downtown, I think you have a marketplace that has gone undiscovered,” she said.
Forgotten might best describe what had happened to Wheaton’s downtown in the ’80s and early ’90s, when stores were either closing or seeking greener pastures. The reasons were many–higher prices, limited variety, tight parking, early closing hours.
“We didn’t have a lot of shopping centers that affected the downtown in the ’60s and ’70s,” Wollensak said, “so as a consequence we had to reinvent ourselves later than others did.”
There is a new vigor in downtown Wheaton that can be traced to the city’s first redevelopment plan, adopted in the mid-1980s, Wollensak said. Many of that plan’s objectives are now reaching the final fulfillment stage.
A 1993 TIF was instrumental in the building of two upscale condo complexes, the 110-unit Waterford Place and the 44-unit Wheaton Place. Their success led to Wesley Square, a 35-unit townhouse development now under construction and 80 percent sold.
According to David Hulseberg, director of community development in Lombard, “density” is the name of the game. Simple in concept, it is often difficult and slow to pay off.
“You need to bulk up the [downtown population] density to attract the restaurateurs, who, once you get them, start to attract retailers again,” he said. It is a formula that “is not for everybody because it doesn’t come without some costs in terms of changing [a community’s] character.”
Wheaton and Aurora both have encouraged downtown living with little fear it would dramatically alter their uniqueness.
In 1999, Wheaton created a TIF for Main Street to encourage reinvestment and redevelopment in the center and eastern parts of downtown–both north and south of the Metra tracks.
Wollensak foresees it boosting the area’s equalized assessed valuation from $11.5 million to from $18 million to $22 million in the next 10 years.
“Truth is, we probably won’t be able to do everything we’d like to see done,” she said, which is why her estimates are lower than the $25 million assessed valuation other officials predict.
Whatever the city is doing, it’s succeeding in luring new retail interest from all directions, according to Carla Spielman, manager of the non-profit Downtown Wheaton Association.
“Within the past year, we’ve had nine new businesses come in, with three more on the way,” she said, noting that while there have been departures, the net is “a big gain.”
“We’ve been filling longtime vacancies downtown,” she said with enthusiasm, ticking off a half-dozen newcomers. “I mean, they filled 10- and 15-year-old vacancies.”
New additions to downtown Wheaton are a $2 million, medieval-styled Metra train station and a four-story, 400-space parking lot north of the tracks, which complements one on the south across the street from Wheaton Towers’ twin, a 20-story high-rise complex with more than 700 apartments.
Although turnover is often a fact of life with eateries, Spielman proudly points to One 20 Ocean Place as a new “destination” dining spot, drawing customers from all over the Chicago area. It filled a big Hale Street vacancy created when Doenges Office Supplies closed its doors.
In the heart of the new TIF district stand several stores (two are vacant) the city would like to acquire from Robert Sandberg, owner of a men’s and boys’ store under his name. He says the city’s offer is a fraction of what the property is worth.
“We’ve got probably the best corner in town,” he contended, “and they come in and want to give you what they think is market value.”
He said the location, at the corner of Main and Front streets, is worth millions and vows to fight “all the way to the Supreme Court” if the city tries legally to condemn his property.
He’s been down this road before and won. Sandberg said he and others have spent nearly $500,000 to renovate and upgrade the building, which he contends “is one of the best in town.” Above his store are 10 offices and three apartments.
“I think they should start with the worst but they’re trying to use their last resort as their first resort,” he said, citing a number of nearby “eyesores” or underused properties.
Mayor James Carr won’t comment on the legal proceedings over Sandberg’s property. He acknowledges “some controversy” over several properties standing in the path of a Jewel-Osco, which wants Main Street frontage for a new 37,000-square-foot store to replace the current 19,000-square-foot unit. It would mean moving six “viable” businesses, he said, “but we’re trying to sell it as a win-win for everybody.”
Already approved is $1.8 million tax break through the downtown TIF for the expansion of Toms-Price, a furniture store that anchors the TIF district’s east side. Carr said discussions with DuPage Housing Authority, Bank One and National-Louis University have been held to explore best uses of properties each owns in the area.
Spielman said the loss of the old courthouse to the new County Farm Road complex is still felt by downtown businesses. Thousands of daytime customers–lawyers, jurors, courthouse workers, their offices and visitors–disappeared.
“They were a great pool of shoppers,” she said, and perhaps impossible to replace. But there are signs that business is on the upswing. Vacancies are disappearing and lease rates are strengthening, now ranging from $13 to $20 per square foot.
The community mood is upbeat, Spielman believed, because people can see that redevelopment works: There are more people shopping in stores that have greater variety.
