It is good news that Forest Park is making a plan to invest a portion of funds accumulated in its Tax Increment Financing districts into facade improvements for local businesses along Roosevelt Road and in the Harlem and Circle area.
First, it will be good to see some fresh looks on the aging fronts of local businesses. It’s often hard for a small business to find the money to fully pay for such refurbishments. In many towns with similar programs, local governments grant matching TIF funds, so business owners or tenants still have to pay a bit out-of-pocket.
Also, this investment honors a sometimes-overlooked aspect of why TIFs can be the most vital economic development tool a small village has to offer. Which is the essential goal of retaining businesses that have already chosen to be in Forest Park, that have built a foundation here.
The upsides of holding onto a business are enormous. This effort recognizes that reality.
Also, part of a late-September village council discussion on economic development was the decision to bring in a consultant to aid village staff on larger potential development projects. Kudos to Village Administrator Rachell Entler and Steve Glinke, the village hall jack-of-all-trades, for their efforts at recruitment of new projects. But this is a specialized set of skills — both the recruitment and then steering a new investor through the processes of local government.
There are big opportunities for more development projects on Roosevelt Road. Getting help to make them happen is a good decision.
History in Forest Park
In a thoughtful essay in today’s Review, Amy Binns-Calvey draws from Forest Park’s deep history to explain why deep concerns about this moment in America, and the growing threat of an authoritarian takeover, are rooted more in America’s own history in the late 1800s than in Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
Binns-Calvey, who does so many things in Forest Park, is one of the people who conducts cemetery tours of the Haymarket Martyrs Monument at Forest Home, through which Forest Park has come to respect and share the deep history found in our local cemeteries.
This is a moment to think about what that history tells us about this moment.