When the Jackson Square Antique Mall in La Grange shut down last summer to make way for a new condominium development, many of the antiques dealers who had set up shop there were displaced.
Some went to the La Grange Park Antique Mall at 800 E. 31st St. But then that shop closed unexpectedly. Finally, some of those vendors found a new home at 31st Street Antiques across the railroad tracks at 9046 31st St. in Brookfield.
More Top Picks Best Tablets For Toddlers Learning
The new owners of 31st Street are Todd Soliday, Kim Crivello, and Kathy DiModica. They connected with Nancy Lisowski, who had run La Grange Park Antiques for four years.
“She was stepping down, and she was going to be retiring,” Soliday said of Lisowski. That gave Soliday and the others the idea that they might start a whole new business.
“I have a background in real estate and I started scoping out commercial real estate and I was like, hey, we can do this. Then Kim came along. She’d been at Vintage Design Mart. She was the one that stepped in and corralled the troops.”
So far, 31st Street has picked up 32 antique vendors, who pay the owners rent and a 15% commission on all sales.
The store opened late last month, but only after a lot of sweat equity was invested. Crivello’s husband did all the electrical work and the owners did all the interior refurbishing work themselves without hiring a single contractor.
Owners Soliday and Crivello also have displays at 31st Street. His is Antiques Rewound and hers is Pretty Creepy Things, which focuses on medical oddities and features a human skull.
Lisowski, whose Budget Box resale store has been in La Grange Park since 1952, pitched in to help get the place up and running.
In the last four years, Lisowski has turned the Budget Box into a fundraiser for BEDS Plus, the La Grange nonprofit supporting the unhoused and housing-challenged. But she wanted customers to know that her merchandise quality hadn’t changed.
“By purchasing the items they’ve been purchasing for the last 40 years, it’s the exact same quality of products,” she said. “But now 100% of it is to help BEDS Plus.”
Lisowski, who also has a small space selling resale items at 31st Street, stressed that the new business was a cooperative endeavor with many different players contributing to the whole. “This is dealer bought and dealer run,” she said.
Wendi’s World, operated by Wendi Kunz, is another new vendor at 31st Street, specializing in midcentury modern glass.
Kunz said her interest in that medium came from her grandmother, who worked as a manager at Woolworths, where LE Smith vases were sold.
More Top Picks Best Grill Caddies And Organizers
“My grandma had a glass vase, one glass vase when I was a kid. She had nine kids, over 30 grandkids and she never bought herself anything,” Kunz said. “She came home with this one vase and I loved that vase.”
That blue vase fostered in Kunz a lifelong love of vintage glass products, especially vases.
“When I got my own home I was able to collect,” she said. “I’ve been collecting for 20 years. I have over 500 vases in my house, and I love it.”
Fellow vendor Ellen Vanderhoof takes a different approach to her product line, as the name of her Eclectic Deja Vu booth indicates.
“A little bit of everything,” she said. “I have some ethnic, I have some vintage. It is a case of some smaller items … purses, vintage purses, jewelry, whatever I can fit in my red case.”
Hank Beckman is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.