That large earth mover cracking the decades-old concrete crust in a fenced-in area at the northeast corner of Indianwood Boulevard and Orchard Drive in Park Forest is the first step in a long-term development of the downtown area.
Some 44 apartments are planned for the site, some of which will be set aside for people with either physical or mental health disabilities. Access South Cook, the developer, owns the land after a closing last month. Over the weekend, a cement mixer was beginning to pour concrete.
As with almost everything planned in a municipal setting, designs come with big erasers. Over the years those plans to build more housing in the heart of the village have undergone numerous changes.
“This is a project began 22 years ago,” says Andrew Brown, the village’s assistant planning and development director.
Brown said since 2002, the village wanted more residential development on that corner. It was part of a comprehensive plan which first called for condominiums but was changed to single-family homes six years later.
A 2019 study recommended 100 units be built between Main Street and Indianwood, but last year the Village Board adopted its latest plan for housing in the downtown area, calling for both multifamily and single-family housing.
Brown said plans call for one 12-unit apartment house and four buildings with eight apartments each. It is designed to mirror the rentals, co-ops and condominiums that make up much of the housing in the village. There will be one entrance in and out and apparently one street address — 364 Orchard Drive.
The area was, in the earliest days of the village, the site of a Mobil gas station. When it closed, the threat of contaminated soil from leaking storage tanks continued. Brown said in 2006, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency declared the site was clean and did not need further remediation.
The project seems to be part of a long-range series of plans designed to re-invent the 75-year-old village.
A preliminary plan for 16 apartments in two three-story brick buildings at the northwest corner of Main Street and Cunningham was recently approved by the Village Board. Brown said that development is still in its early stages and must still get all its “required entitlements.”
Meanwhile, in an effort to underline the “forest” element in Park Forest, more than 100 trees are being planted, with most of them slated for parkways and some 14 for the village’s parks.
Alas, the start of construction has triggered the usual spate of negative comments on social media with one writer whining the apartments will be set aside for unwanted “immigrants.”
Check your family tree. The last time I looked, except for Native Americans everyone who arrived in this country in the last 500 years, either by force or by choice, were immigrants. Mine came from Russia.
Ties that bind
Crete, Illinois is about 670 miles from Asheville, North Carolina, but only a helping hand away after a fierce tropical storm: the aftershock of the hurricane named Helene.
You’ve probably seen the grim pictures of demolished homes, the damaged roads, the loss of life and the shattered families. This city of 94,000, nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains, desperately needs help.
Help is coming to Asheville from across this nation, from large government resources to the generosity of the public. These paragraphs are what some residents of Crete are doing.
Last Sunday, a large truck with 36 pallets laden with food, water, toiletries, over-the-counter medications and almost everything you can buy over the counter rolled out of the Walt’s Food Center in Crete, bound nonstop for Asheville. It is scheduled to return to that shopping center on Exchange Avenue by mid-week to pick up another shipment.
Money is also welcome to pay for the gasoline needed to get from here to there and back again.
We hope to see you there.
Jerry Shnay, at jerryshnay@gmail.com, is a freelance columnist for the Daily Southtown.
