When Hainesville Mayor Ted Mueller and his wife, Barbara, saw the property where their new home was to be built nearly a decade ago, they noticed tall, brown fuzzy cattails growing in the lot.
Today the wild plants, usually found in marshes or swamps, barely stand a chance.
The number of residents in Hainesville, which now has several subdivisions and will soon gain a 7-Eleven and a Citgo gas station, has ballooned from 134 in 1990 to 2,129 in 2000, according to the U.S Census Bureau.
Though the nearly 1,500 percent increase in the village is an anomaly in Lake County, the growing population is not.
The county’s population, which has become increasingly ethnically and racially diverse, has risen 25 percent since 1990, from 516,418 to 644,356.
Hispanics, who are mostly concentrated in Waukegan, North Chicago, Zion, Mundelein and the Round Lake area, account for the fastest-growing minority group. Their numbers have more than doubled, from 38,570 in 1990 to 92,716 in 2000.
Hispanics make up 14.4 percent of the county’s population, while African-Americans make up nearly 7 percent and Asians–whose numbers have grown from 12,135 to 24,866 since 1990–nearly 4 percent.
Diversity has brought change to an area once predominantly Caucasian.
The Lake County Health Department and Community Health Center has made great strides in hiring Hispanic employees, said Dale Galassie, the department’s executive director. Nineteen percent of the department’s 800 employees are Hispanic, said Connie Rowles, the department’s director of human resources.
The county has more than 70,000 uninsured low-income residents, many of whom are Hispanic. Bill Mays, director of community health, said of 5,000 clients in the Family Case Management program, which works to improve the health of low-income pregnant women and their children, 90 percent are Hispanic. To serve them, the department has hired 12 bilingual health assistants.
“There is also a difficult balance in not trying to disenfranchise our African-American population,” Galassie said. To address this, the county plans to establish a dialogue with the black community, he added.
Towns adapt to diversity
Municipalities also have taken measures to accommodate minority groups.
Mundelein has had a multicultural committee of the village’s Project CAPE (Creating a Positive Environment) for several years and has opened two resource centers that provide bilingual teachers and immunization information.
Highland Park, a mostly white North Shore suburb, made headlines last summer when it promised to implement 11 initiatives to curb racial profiling by police. They include sensitivity training, aggressive recruitment of minorities on the police force and providing cameras in all police vehicles.
The plans were announced in the wake of a report by former U.S. Atty. Thomas P. Sullivan that mostly exonerated top police officials of encouraging officers to stop black and Latino motorists without probable cause. The report said, however, that there have been isolated instances of racial insensitivity.
Patricia Handy, president and chief executive officer of the Lake County Urban League, suggested that because various ethnic groups are making gains and increasing their political impact, the term minority should be eliminated from the county’s vocabulary.
Expansion the byword
Despite the wide range of economic conditions in the county, it ranks among the country’s wealthiest, including such affluent communities as Lake Forest and Highland Park. The county has grown thanks to affordable homes, business development and immigrants who followed family and friends into the area.
Expansion the byword
The expansion has been most visible in communities such as Grayslake, where the population grew 150 percent from 1990 to 2000, and Gurnee, where the population grew 110 percent. The population in more established communities, such as Libertyville and Deerfield, has been more or less stable.
“As people have more money, they choose to move to areas that they perceive as having a higher quality of life, and often that’s expressed in lower density, more open space and quality of schools,” said Dennis Sandquist, deputy director of the Lake County Department of Planning, Building and Development.
Given the strong economy and burgeoning affluence in the 1990s, Sandquist said, county officials expected the numbers to grow but not as rapidly as they did. In 1999 the U.S. Census Bureau had estimated that the county’s population would be 617,000 in 2000, and based on annual growth in the last few years, anticipated 629,000 residents at most.
“We were caught off guard by how high the numbers were,” Sandquist said. “It’s obvious that it’s been a big challenge, primarily in the area of providing public services and infrastructure.”
The county has begun updating its Regional Framework Plan, which was adopted in 1994 after meetings with all 52 municipalities. Last month several minority groups addressed the Lake County Regional Planning Commission to discuss what they felt were the most important items in the plan, which includes sections on development, transportation, housing, employment and open space.
“All of us are so culturally rich and we have so much to bring to the table–and it’s not just our food,” said Maria Cecilia Arza, president of the Latino Coalition of Lake County, after making remarks before the commission.
“I think in knowing about each other it fosters respect, and I think ignorance is what fosters fear. So as we get to know each other, we all realize that we all have the same needs. We all want our kids to be educated. We all want better jobs. We all want better housing.”
Transportation the top issue
Based on recent comments from Arza, Sandquist and U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), and the results of public forums held in the spring, the issue topping most county residents’ concerns is transportation.
Congested roads throughout the county have led the Illinois Department of Transportation to revisit proposals such as extending Illinois Highway 53 north into the county or widening Interstate Highway 94–the Tri-State Tollway–to eight lanes and making several routes six lanes wide. The County Board, which has made transportation its top priority for the last three years, has also approved a $39 million construction program, hoping to provide some relief on the gridlocked roads.
Mass transit is another component of traffic-related issues. “Yes, we have to improve the roads, but more important, we have to fully support mass transit projects,” Kirk said.
A rail-bus hub concept already approved for Waukegan’s lakefront may alleviate some of the problems that have been dogging the mostly low-income minority community for years.
Mass transit is not as available in the northern part of the county as it is in the south, making it difficult for people who use the group’s services to get to work, said Handy, of the Lake County Urban League. “Most of the jobs that are being directed to the Lake County Urban League are from companies in the southern and western part of the county,” she said.
With no reliable means of transportation, “they’re fired because they’re late or don’t show up,” said Marian McElroy, president of the Lake County branch of the NAACP.
Arza further suggested that the Regional Planning Commission push for bilingual signage and bilingual drivers on buses, particularly in areas with a high concentration of Latinos.
Courts and jail crowded
A grim reality for the county as its population grows is the need for additional court and jail facilities.
“I think we all have to expect that our [jail] population is going to rise as the county’s population is going to rise,” said Charles DeFilippo, Lake County’s director of corrections. “Unfortunately, not everyone is a law-abiding citizen. “
Lake County Sheriff’s Department officials have promised to continue using programs that provide alternatives to incarceration but have stressed the need for expansion. The present jail, near the county courthouse in Waukegan, has 717 jail and work-release beds and has operated near capacity since 1997.
The County Board has approved a preliminary plan for a 400-bed minimum-security facility, to be located near the current facility, with more court space and offices for prosecutors and public defenders. In preliminary hearings in the fall, a $47.5 million figure was attached to the plan, but officials hope to trim that by at least $10 million.
Since 1990 calls to the Sheriff’s Department have doubled, and pretrial caseloads have grown from 75 in 1988 to more than 500 in 1999, according to Sheriff’s Department staffers. Admission to jail of non-sentenced inmates has grown by 71 percent in the last 10 years, and admission of sentenced inmates has increased by 43 percent.
Officials also hope to increase facilities for traffic and juvenile cases, said Chief Judge Jane Waller of the 19th Judicial Circuit, which contains Lake and McHenry Counties. Traffic cases have increased from 157,108 in 1990 to 209,103 in 2000,and juvenile cases grew from 443 in 1990 to 1,357 in 2000, according to court records.
The County Board has authorized the purchase of 3.2 acres near Mundelein to be the site of the county’s fourth branch court, handling minor traffic and ordinance violations.
Another challenge court officials face is meeting the growing demands for court interpreters for the non-English speaking population, Waller said.
Schools struggle with growth
While the county has its plate full dealing with the population growth, the growth also has deeply affected individual municipalities’ plans.
The numerous residents who flocked to Lake County for the quality schools are now asked in nearly every election to help the schools deal with growth by raising taxes. In many cases residents are saying no, and as a result, some districts–such as those in Round Lake and Waukegan–are struggling financially and are facing significant program cuts.
Overcrowding has been a problem, pushing school officials to ask residents for money for new schools and more programs.
After failing to get voter approval of a 12-cent increase for its education tax rate in November, Gurnee-based Warren Township High School District 121 worked doubly hard to have the measure passed in April and succeeded, with the approval of 62 percent of the voters. Without the increase the district, whose enrollment is to grow from 3,200 to 4,000 in four years, would have been forced to cut programs. The district’s largest feeder district, Woodland Community Consolidated School District 50, was able to garner support last fall for its $48 million bond issue to finance a new intermediate school, an addition to the middle school and a reconfiguration of its south campus.
Gurnee’s population has more than doubled in the last decade, from 13,701 to 28,834.
“We have a pretty much young professional community,” said James Hayner, Gurnee village administrator. “Even with the bigger homes and bigger mortgages, they’ve been pretty supportive of our educational plans. They do place an emphasis on the schools, and they put their pocketbooks behind it.”
Towns look to revitalize
Providing amenities and revitalized neighborhoods is another concern for the towns in Lake County.
Hainesville, the county’s oldest incorporated village, is trying to pace its development with the rising population, planning for a new kindergarten-through-4th-grade school and new Village Hall, among other projects. “We’ve kind of outgrown this one,” Mueller said, referring to the current Village Hall, which was a schoolhouse in the 1940s. “We’re bursting at the seams.”
In Mundelein, the growth has meant larger homes, plans to revitalize downtown, including plans for a new police station and one of the county’s few Krispy Kreme doughnut stores.
“Our size has given us more interest,” said Mike Flynn, Mundelein’s assistant village administrator. “We’ve had more interest from commercial developers. It’s meant more economic potential in the community.” Mundelein’s population grew from 21,215 in 1990 to 30,935 in 2000.
Waukegan is also jump-starting several projects this year, including condominium developments along the lake and a $15.5 million revitalization of the Genesee Theatre downtown. Waukegan was among the first cities to be named as one of the participants in the state’s Illinois MainStreets Large Cities Program, which provides technical assistance to communities to redevelop their downtowns.
While development remains at the forefront for many municipalities, the importance of keeping open spaces is just as sacred. Kirk, who says preservation is near the top of his agenda, has met with residents to discuss the issues and hopes to hold similar meetings throughout the year.
Voters passed an $85 million bond referendum proposal in November to pay for the Forest Preserve District to acquire open land and enhance existing forest preserves.
“The more development there is, the more pressure there is to preserve those things,” Sandquist said. “But I also think that Lake County has a long history as a leader in the area of conservation and ideas in protecting natural resources and integrating them into neighborhood designs.”
Lake County statistics
POPULATION GROWTH
In total population, percent change
1960 293,656
1970 +30% 382,638
1980 +15% 440,372
1990 +17% 516,418
2000 +25% 644,356
THE 2000 BREAKDOWN BY RACE
In population, percent of total
ONE RACE
White 80.1%
Black 6.9%
Some other race 6.7%
Asian 3.9%
TWO OR MORE RACES 2%
Notes: These figures include Hispanics of all races. The American Indian and Alaska Native population was .3%, and the Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander population was less than .1%.
HISPANIC TRENDS
In population, percent of total
1990 38,570 (7.5%)
2000 92,716 (14.4%)
Hispanic population change: 1990 – 2000 140.4%
TOWN POPULATION TRENDS
In percentages from 1990 to 2000
HIGHEST
Hainesville 1,489%
Lakemoor (Lake Co. part) 278%
Old Mill creek 244%
Grayslake 150%
Gurnee 110%
LOWEST
Bannockburn* 3%
Barrington* (Lake Co. part) 3%
Highland* 3%
North Chicago* 3%
Tower Lakes -2%
Indian Creek -21%
Highwood -22%
Barrington Hills (Lake Co. part) -28%
*Tied for fifth from the bottom
Sources: U.S. Census, Lake County Department of Planning, Building and Development
Chicago Tribune
