Category Archives: Elgin

Today is my sixth housiversary! I closed on this 120-year-old beauty – full of hidden charm and stories – six years ago today. Last year’s fifth housiversary felt like a bigger deal, but I’m still feeling nostalgic today.

As I sit at my desk, I hear train horns echoing across the river as they rattle into Elgin. I chose my location in part for its proximity to such trains, as the 7-minute walk to the Metra station is easy. (While I now only commute one day a week, I have made that walk hundreds of times in six years, from sunrise to sleetset.)

I grew fascinated by the people on the trains, watching the same people interact day in, day out.  I even came up with standard descriptors for the late-night crowd.

I’ve really been surprised by how many other people are intrigued by trains. Sure, little kids’ eyes widen when the see the train, but there are quite a few grown-ups who are also captivated.

Which brings me to the 2015 Lincoln Funeral Train. A group is building a replica of the train that carried President Lincoln back home to Illinois after his 1865 death. Lincoln’s funeral procession traveled 1600 miles from Washington, DC to Springfield, IL, stopping in 12 major cities for memorial services.

President Lincoln played a major role in promoting railroads, and was instrumental in making the transcontinental railroad a reality. And Illinois, of course, was the crossroads of the system. You can still observe this, riding a Metra train as it slithers through the railyards on the west side of Chicago.

To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the funeral train procession, the 2015 Lincoln Funeral Train group is preparing to embark on a similar procession with a replica train in April 2015.

Right now, there’s a replica of the 1860s locomotive, the Leviathan63, available for viewing at Elgin’s Gail Borden Library on Saturday, April 21. The group is also hosting a fundraising dinner – complete with an Abraham Lincoln impersonator – that evening to raise funds for the project.

Tickets are available online or at Ace Hardware (Spring and Lillian locations), the Elgin Historical Society, and Miller Insurance Services at 1108 Larkin.

I’m eager to see how the procession unfolds.

Fireworks are about more than just the explosions

While sitting at the Council meeting last week, listening to Mayor Kaptain explain the rationale behind partnering with Hoffman Estates for fireworks, I was reminded of one of his campaign themes:

“Build community, not things.“

One of the things I’ve always loved about Elgin is the sense of community. For a town of 108,000, it sure feels like a small town in that people know and look out for each other.

That’s not easy to say these days. More and more, people are isolated from their neighbors, or skeptical of neighbors with good intentions.

So do fireworks build community? And if so, can we build Elgin’s community spirit by having “Elgin” fireworks in Hoffman Estates?

I was relieved to hear that the proposed cost was relatively low – $15,000 was pledged during the meeting, which works out to less than 14 cents per Elginite. (Staff time, including police to direct traffic, has not been calculated yet.)

A community-planned and run event, such as the Jaycees were proposing, would definitely foster community. Volunteers who invest time and effort build relationships with each other, but also expand their community. They reach out through their extended networks to get additional help and to draw people to the festival. News of such events travels via social networks and through word-of-mouth. People are often proud of their contributions and want to share it with others.

While partnering with Hoffman Estates achieves the goal of blowing things up, I hope that the planners engage community groups to really bring Elgin into the event. Because that’s the point of any festival: providing a place for neighbors to come together and celebrate the community they share.

Any of us could go attend another community’s fireworks, but if we’re paying part of the bill, let’s make sure it’s truly an Elgin festival.

Fireworks rock. But are they worth the taxpayer dollars?

Last week, Facebook was lighting up with the possibility of Elgin-sponsored fireworks. As proposed, Elgin might partner with Hoffman Estates (and possibly Hanover Park) to put on an Independence Day display at the Sears Center.

We lost our city-sponsored pyrotechnics in 2008, when projections warned of looming budget trouble. At that time, I remember the discussion being framed in terms of necessities vs. nice-to-haves. City officials mused about what citizens would prefer: fireworks or trash pickup. Of course, most rationally chose trash pickup, a “core service.”

I love fireworks. They’re magical, and they inspire awe and wonder.

But we’re broke. Elgin has been refreshingly transparent about just how broke we actually are. We went through a very open, very painful budget process in December that even affected core services. Effective January 1, we’re paying for trash pickup, with $13.25 added to our water bills every month. Older neighborhoods like mine now pay for leaf removal, too. And yet now, barely three months later, we’re looking at spending money on a nice-to-have?

More frustrating is that the news of new spending comes on the heels of January layoffs that eliminated 22 full-time and seven part-time positions. While some of the posts were already vacant, 19 people lost their job to help save $1.8 million.

Granted, partnering with other communities is a step in the right direction. Rather than competing with our neighboring towns, pooling resources can benefit both sides. We just partnered with Hoffman Estates to spend $53,865 on a dog park. (While the dog park will be nice to have, it won’t actually be in Elgin. The money will be spent in Hoffman Estates, instead of in some of our own dilapidated parks.)

There is another way. The Elgin Jaycees are spearheading an effort to fund a fireworks festival privately, through donations, sponsorships and community donations.

Let’s give the Jaycees a shot. If they have the organization and gumption to run this, let them. Rather than spending tax dollars, let’s see if some of our local businesses – say, perhaps the ones getting incentives from the city – might be willing to chip in a bit.

What do you think? How should we pay for fireworks? Or are fireworks even worth paying for? Take the poll below.

The Council will consider the fireworks question at the March 21 Committee of the Whole meeting. I’m eager to hear the discussion.

UPDATE 3/22: At the March 21 meeting, the Council unanimously approved committing $15,000 towards “enhancing” Hoffman Estates’ fireworks display and cooperating on their festival. No cost estimates were given for staff time or potential police time. 

My recent Perceptions & Pawnshops post has gotten a lot of attention, with several great comments. (Thank you!) A lot of the comments touched on a common theme: when there are bigger, deeper, systemic problems, image is moot.

Commenter Beth, a non-Elginite looking in, summed it up best with an analogy:

“While I think aesthetics are extremely important, they are merely the frosting on the cake and we all know that you need to bake a good cake first before you put on the frosting. Frosting an old piece of bread is not going to fool anyone once they take the first bite.”

She’s right, and I wholeheartedly agree. I’ve written before about some of the bigger, structural issues that affect our city and its image. Indeed, I make my living creating, massaging and maintaining images. Marketers know that if the product is crap, the best marketing plan in the world is for naught.

We do have our problems, but we can’t neglect our image as we work to fix things.

We have a large low-income population, which is why we have pawnshops, payday loans and their ilk. As commenter Chris pointed out, pawnshops are a better option than payday loans for people in financial distress.

Our schools continue to struggle mightily. To really shine, a city needs good schools. For families with children, the local school’s reputation and test scores can be one of the biggest factors when picking a home. And having poor schools often presents a “hidden tax” when families feel they must pay for private school on top of property taxes.

But crime isn’t nearly as bad as it used to be – in fact, we’re now statistically safer than Schaumburg. As we slowly turn the corner on the recession, businesses are cautiously launching or expanding – sometimes even without government incentives.

Another commenter on the pawnshop post, Chuck, was right when he argued, “The pretense that we can buff our image up into a gleaming city on a hill is delusional.”

However, I’ll argue that we still must be mindful of how our actions affect that image. The bread may be stale, but we shouldn’t sprinkle it with arsenic. Presentation matters. And a decent image will entice people to take a bite or investigate further.

Chuck also mentioned a disparity at the recent special city council session:

“[A]t one time, the discussion was focused on just letting Elgin be Elgin, we are what we are. But in minutes, the discussion was how to improve our image.”

And there’s the rub. Elgin can’t just be Elgin. Elgin’s very soul isn’t content with stagnation and just being. Elgin is an urban city amidst the suburban sprawl, an old industrial city trying to reinvent itself. That reinvention is the key. Long after the factories left, we’re no longer settling. We’re reaching and striving for more.

As Paul Challacombe recently wrote, “[S]omething incremental but fantastic is going on here in downtown Elgin. A ghostly canyon of bricks is being animated, through restoration, human imagination and something resolutely American— entrepreneurs.”

That reinvention entails – requires – crafting a new image rather than accepting the image of who we used to be.

We do have to fix the core. The focus on image won’t fix our schools, and we still have residents who need the services provided by pawnshops and their kin. But talking about our low crime rate and celebrating the good do help bolster our image – which, in turn, attracts more people willing to work to improve our town.

So let’s keep crowing about the good and working to cultivate the kind of image that attracts good, solid residents who will help our town thrive. But at the same time, let’s roll up our sleeves and help solve those structural problems.

We’ve got the ingredients. Let’s make some cake.

Sunday, I went to the House Blessing for the latest Habitat for Humanity project. I volunteered on the site a few times early last year, and then got sucked into school. But for the past 18 months, I’ve often passed the house while running or biking, watching the transformation.

Pilar and her children, as Tammy (left) and Marlene look on.

This house, on Moseley Street in the SWAN neighborhood, was the first WomenBuild for Habitat of the Northern Fox Valley. From demolition to final detailing, every step was handled by women. Marlene Hensrud served as project director, and Tammy Guilinger as forewoman. Both taught me a lot about construction, rehab and community.

Sunday was especially special. At the blessing, the old house was filled to the gills with volunteers, family, friends, new neighbors, and well-wishers. A pastor led prayers for the home and the family, and Marlene and Tammy handed the keys to Pilar, the new owner. Pilar and her two children will move in next month and finish the final painting and landscaping in the spring.

The house had been vacant for years, an eyesore on an otherwise nice block. As with any vacant house, there’s always concern about its fate – and how it will impact the rest of the block. Will the house find a new family? Will it be bought by an unscrupulous landlord, bent on carving out as many apartments as possible? Or will it just remain vacant, owned  by nobody, crumbling bit by bit with every storm or stiff wind?

The house was built in 1863, making it one of the oldest houses in the neighborhood. The future did not look good. But with funding from the federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program, the City purchased the house as a strategic rehab, turning it over to Habitat to conduct the work. The project finished below budget. (I’m not generally a fan of programs like NSP, but Habitat has handled its houses in a much more fiscally responsible manner.)

I know the neighbors are looking forward to welcoming the new family. And as construction sounds echo down my own street, I hope my nearby eyesores will find similar TLC in the months to come. The housing crisis has hurt so many, but maybe we’re finally starting to see some success stories.

On one side of me, an 1860s house left for dead and condemned has been fixed up and now is one of the nicest on the block. On the other side, the long-empty home now looks far worse than ever – but that’s because the new owner is busy replacing windows, the roof, the siding and all the innards. A few blocks away, a neighbor reported that the house next door to him – vacant for sixteen long, long years – was just bought by a new couple.

Are you seeing similar signs of hope in your neighborhood? I know things are still very bad – and so many good people lost their homes – but I wonder if prices have fallen far enough that people are willing to take a chance on some of these old homes with good bones.

Last night, I spoke against a new pawnshop that has applied to open in the Town & Country shopping center (McLean/Lillian, in the old Trefon’s).

I’ve learned a lot about the pawn industry lately. It’s not nearly as seedy as I thought. Pawnshops are actually a much better option for people than the payday loans and cash-for-gold shops that have sprung up like noxious weeds. They’re tightly regulated by both the state and city, and work closely with the police to report their daily intakes. They make their money through loans, and in the end, the customer often gets their item back, to re-pawn later if needed. With cash-for-gold stores, items are quickly melted down, never to be seen again.

But sometimes, reality doesn’t matter nearly as much as perception.

Perceptions run deep. They start in childhood and grow as you’re exposed to the world: to your parents, to television and movies, to friends, to teachers. And those perceptions, once baked in, are very tough to change. When cobbled together, perceptions form images of people, communities, or things.

Elgin knows this. Elgin fights perceptions daily, constantly crafting and re-casting Elgin’s image. In the six years I’ve lived here, my marketer’s heart has marveled at all the effort that goes into crafting and re-casting Elgin’s image.

• We spent $75,000 (!) to redesign our city logo and develop a slogan: “The City in the Suburbs.”
• We have an Image Commission that gives annual “Image Awards” to recognize “image-enhancing efforts from Elgin residents, businesses and civic organizations.”
• We build and rebuild websites to lure companies from abroad, filled with pictures of diverse, happy people who have somehow found an Elgin where it’s always sunny.

Image is on the minds and lips of city officials, not to mention residents who contradict outdated perceptions that continue to tarnish our image decades later.

We spent oodles of money on fancy brick pavers and new streetscaping for downtown. We celebrate ECC as a major regional destination. The city tries to lure golfers to the courses it owns, including one right by the proposed pawnshop. Thousands of out-of-towners come to Larkin High School every year for various sports and other extracurricular activities.

Each person who comes into our town makes or affirms their own perceptions of Elgin. Each presents an opportunity to change their minds, to shake their perceptions of the Elgin of old. For the younger people headed to ECC or Larkin, it’s often a first impression. So we talk about how the entry corridors fuel these perceptions.

And yet, when faced with a pawnshop to open at a major interchange and entry point, we allow it.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for letting the market decide what types of businesses can open in a given area. But the city puts pawnshops in a separate category for a reason. Until a year ago, there were none in town. The city created a special type of license for pawnshops, and issued only one, to Windy City Jewelry & Loan. Windy City doesn’t use the word “Pawn” in their signage. They don’t overtly advertise that’s what they do. (Interestingly, the city has no such restrictions on payday loans, cash-for-gold shops or similar businesses. By my count, there are at least 20 such businesses scattered around town, including one already in the Town & Country shopping center.)

Rendering of EZPawn's proposed signage

But this new shop will have “EZPAWN” emblazoned 30 inches high by 198 inches wide, on a bright red background. Depending on how they position the sign, it will be one of the first things people see when they exist Route 20 at McLean, or even as they drive past on 20. That includes people going to Larkin, ECC and the Highlands golf course.

The Zoning Board recognized this and asked the petitioners if they could perhaps not use the word “Pawn” on their sides, and instead use the corporate name, EZ-Corp. But EZPawn is the trade name, so of course they’ll use their name on their signage.

The Board ultimately approved the proposal, which now heads to the City Council for final approval.

Whatever you personally believe about pawnshops, the widely held perception is not good. Thanks to my research, my perceptions have certainly changed. (Plus, Google now serves me lots of ads for pawnshops, payday loans, and bankruptcy attorneys.) But if someone already has less-than-ideal image of Elgin, how will that sign change – or affirm – their perceptions?

Am I off base? What do you think?

View the entire petition and Zoning Board details. Full disclosure: in my capacity as president of the South West Area Neighbors, I did write a letter based on input from the neighborhood, and spoke at the hearing.