Once the Blackhawk Water Tower Plaza was a convenient shopping area for residents in the south end of Park Forest.
The site at Blackhawk Avenue and Indianwood Drive was once home to Newman’s Pharmacy, a Little Jewel Foods convenience store, Froggie’s Ice Cream store, Faso’s Pizza, a used book emporium, John’s Hair Salon and an arts conservatory.
Today, the long vacant site at Blackhawk Drive and Indianwood Boulevard is being torn down. Time and neglect sealed their fate. Two of the buildings experienced roof collapses, says Andrew Brown, the village’s assistant director of economic development.
“Overall, the buildings have become defunct, obsolete, have had long-deferred maintenance and are dangerous to the public” says Brown, who said grants from Cook County using federal funding sources will pay for the project.
Removing the dilapidated structures will make the site more attractive to developers, says Brown.
It is to be seen if the vultures who gather atop the water tower will remain on the premises when work is complete or will seek better viewing sites
Former residents recognized
A recent news release from the Birch Street Townhomes in Park Forest noted units of two distinguished former residents, former Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar and village founder Philip Klutznick, will have plaques attached to the residences they occupied.
The document also mentioned the role played by Ross and Leona DeLue, the first residents in the new town.
A couple of decades ago we sat in the backyard of the DeLue home on Blackhawk Drive as Ross revealed how this came about.
After serving in the Army Air Forces during World War II, DeLue was hired as a reporter for the old Chicago Herald-American, and because he was a veteran, he began investigating swindlers preying on fellow servicemen.
At the time, post-World War II housing had not caught up with demand so when Ross heard about a “G.I. Town” being built 25 miles south of Chicago, he thought it was too good to be true. But what he heard and what he saw convinced him that a community centered on ex-GIs looking for a place to live and raise a family was not a swindle.
Although Klutznick planned to become the village’s first resident, his wife Ethel was giving birth to a son, in Chicago, thus delaying his arrival. That is why Ross and Leona DeLue became Park Forest’s first residents Aug. 29, 1948. The Klutznick family moved in the next day,
Klutznick later wrote that “Ethel and our newborn fourth son, Sam, came straight from the maternity hospital to our new home.”
While Klutznick became an ambassador to the United Nations during the presidency of John F. Kennedy and later as secretary of commerce under President Jimmy Carter, Ross DeLue worked for the betterment of the town, helping to found the village’s first school district, helping in the building of Freedom Hall and being a booster for almost everything Park Forest.
Former Mayor Henry Dietch called DeLue “a father-mentor” to the community and that resonated when Park Forest celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1997, with Ross and Leona DeLue honored as the grand marshals of the Fourth of July parade.
Good job, well done
After 21 years of working to better the village’s economic picture, Sandra Zoellner, Park Forest’s director of economic development and planning, was the center of attention in a farewell tribute last Friday in Village Hall.
Hired in 2005, she was an immediate contributor with her work on the village’s new slogan of Live Grow Discover, and soon became a determined battler in her unending efforts to restructure the unfair property tax rates imposed upon the south suburbs.
A village resolution on her efforts reads, in part, that “throughout her career she has been guided by the principle of doing what one can, with what one has, where one is,” and that one person who cares can affect change.
More than that, she never wavered and never flinched in her unending efforts to right financial wrongs imposed on our community and those of our neighbors by those who take our tax money.
Jerry Shnay is a freelance columnist for the Daily Southtown.
