As a jetliner rumbled overhead on a recent brisk morning, Robert Lords stood outside Ye Olde Book Worm newsstand and bookstore on Main Street in Bensenville scratching a lottery game card with his car key.
Lords, 67, called himself a Bensenville resident for 37 years. But two years ago–after raising three kids in two separate homes–he moved to Bartlett, about 15 miles to the west. He looked to the sky and shrugged as the large aircraft descended toward nearby O’Hare International Airport.
“I wanted to get away from the noise,” he says plainly, and quickly notes he just won $2 on the lottery game. “And we knew it would just get worse. We had to get out.”
A blue-collar town of nearly 21,000 with a burgeoning minority population, Bensenville is the epicenter of the O’Hare expansion deal struck last week between Gov. George Ryan and Mayor Richard Daley. More than 500 homes and 100 businesses will be bulldozed by the city for a southern runway under the plan, but Bensenville officials contend 1,000 more houses could be demolished–and a cemetery moved–if a western entrance road is built.
In all, they say, the O’Hare expansion will gut the city of 30 percent of its tax base, or about $3.3 million, nearly equal the entire Police Department’s annual budget.
Bensenville is a community where residents believe in small-town values and talk of knowing everyone else on the street. Yet they also enjoy the town’s proximity to big-city draws such as O’Hare and several expressways. The modest homes that fill the landscape hold many seniors who moved here after World War II and never left and families drawn to the area by the chance to make their real-estate investment.
But the announcement the airport expansion is moving forward–even if it takes decades to complete–has shaken a community that has been dealing with other controversial issues.
For three years, the village has struggled with a police scandal that saw nearly half of the 39-member force resign or dismissed amid allegations of misconduct. Since 1990, voters have turned down 17 of 20 tax-hike requests for the town, its library, schools and parks. Now, the schools are in such bad financial shape that–despite a $1 million bailout from the village–they still plan to ask voters in March for a tax hike to pay for daily operations. The Park District, meanwhile, canceled the town’s 4th of July fireworks for the first time in two decades because it had become too costly.
Yet O’Hare is what is on everyone’s minds here.
Like Lords, many are upset over the expansion plan. But also like Lords, many are beginning to accept its inevitability and deciding what their next move should be–and whether they should move away.
Rebeca Cabra, manager of La Huerta, one of the longest-surviving Hispanic groceries in Bensenville, said she and the owners are looking for places to relocate in Elgin and West Chicago, other suburbs with significant Latino populations.
A tidy store with pinatas and soccer uniforms hanging from the ceiling, La Huerta has been in Bensenville for 14 years, Cabra said, serving many of the residents who will be displaced if the O’Hare project goes through. Most of the single-family homes and townhouses in the area are affordable, and many of them are rental units, she said.
“If we lose all of those houses, there’s not much reason for us to stay,” said Cabra, 32, a Mexican immigrant who moved to Bensenville 12 years ago.
Thirty-seven percent of Bensenville’s residents are Hispanic, 2000 census figures show, and minorities make up 48 percent of the town’s residents. Meanwhile, the number of non-Hispanic whites living in town declined by more than 2,300, or 11 percent, between 1990 and 2000.
While the changing demographics occasionally led to tense times, Cabra said, long-term residents and Hispanics have been aligned in opposition on the O’Hare issue. But now that a deal has been reached, Cabra questions what’s next.
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“We did everything our leaders told us to do,” she said. “We went to the rallies and meetings, and it hasn’t worked. What else can we do?”
At Nick’s Barbershop, owner Nick Falco faces double jeopardy if the Daley-Ryan deal goes forward. His home is likely one of the 500 marked for demolition, and, although he was told his three-seat barbershop is out of harm’s way on the south side of Green Street, he isn’t so sure.
“It would destroy the town,” said Falco, 61. “We can’t survive all those homes gone.”
Although he can’t imagine anywhere he’d rather live, Falco said he’s young enough to move if he must. He worries more about the village’s older citizens such as Alice Olivero.
Olivero, 88, moved into a townhouse on Roosevelt Court with her family in 1964. Her father, husband, and son died years ago. With her other son living out of state, Olivero said, relocating seems impossible.
“Sometimes you have family, and everyone pitches in and helps, but I don’t have anybody,” Olivero said during a break at Ye Olde Book Worm, where she works two or three times a week.
Senior citizens make up more than 11 percent of Bensenville’s population, which helps keep the town’s history important to the community.
Established in 1884, Bensenville grew on the back of the railroad industry, especially around World War I when the Milwaukee Railroad built a massive roundhouse there. But as times changed–and planes replaced trains–the town saw the future directly to the east at O’Hare.
In the 1940s, the town’s population doubled after Douglas Aircraft opened a factory at the airport. And as O’Hare grew, so did Bensenville’s industry, much of which continues to be airport-related.
Now, however, the symbiotic relationship between the village and the airport has become a contentious one.
Mayor John Geils last week filed a lawsuit against Illinois Department of Transportation trying to pry details of the agreement from the state. Geils, whose family goes back generations in Bensenville and whose funeral home is one of the oldest local businesses in the village, has been one of the most vocal opponents of the proposal.
But more and more, he finds himself a member of a shrinking choir. What started as an organized effort among suburbs opposing the expansion has splintered in the last several months, leaving Bensenville and others on the edge of the runways increasingly on their own.
Even in his own back yard, Geils’ position is questioned.
Don Carroll, a former DuPage County Board member from Bensenville who has lived in town for more than 40 years, said civic leaders have been shortsighted about the O’Hare issue and should have been negotiating with Chicago to see what Bensenville could get from an expansion.
“If you take O’Hare away, the town will die,” Carroll said. “In some ways, I can see this expansion having a positive impact. It will take out some of the older homes, most of which are in that area with the southern runway, and offer opportunities for more development like hotels.”
That’s been a popular refrain for supporters of O’Hare expansion for years, one being picked up more across the village.
“I don’t want to see senior citizens forced from their homes, but this could be a real economic boom for this area,” said Dale Brownewell, owner of Ye Olde Book Worm. “People don’t want change, I understand that, but sometimes you just have to accept what’s what.”