Odds and ends with some a bit odder than others:
It’s vintage now: There was an extended period of time back in the 1970s and into the ‘80s when both Forest Park and Oak Park had serious retail underperformance issues. This manifested itself in storefront after storefront being filled with fairly trashy antique stores/junk stores/self-storage units disguised as junk stores.
A few of these shops were gems with legit antique furniture and jewelry. Mostly though, they boasted chipped china and costume necklaces.
Gradually, as the confidence level in these burgs rose, real stores paying more rent shoved out the so-called antique stores. It was an age of invigorating retail entrepreneurs, and later restaurateurs, lining Madison Street in Forest Park. They also found well-heeled Oak Parkers wanted retail options, too.
Now, in the world of Amazon, where actual retail is tough to come by and there are only so many fitness places to fill storefronts, Forest Park is seeing an uptick in antique shops coming back to Madison. But, says David King, the retail leasing agent who dominates in these parts, don’t call them “antique shops.” These are “vintage shops,” he says. And if you curate them correctly, King says younger folks love them.
West Sub needs a lift(s): The Journal got a tip late last week that Oak Park’s building department had totally shut down the West Suburban Medical Center campus in Oak Park. Not that there was much going on there after CEO Manoj Prasad shut down the inpatient and ER portions of the place in late March.
But there were still a few doctors and clinicians working in the medical office building. One was a dialysis provider. When Oak Park firefighters were called to carry multiple dialysis patients down five flights of stairs because the only working elevator at West Sub had gone out, the village shut it all down.
There have been lots of numbers floating around that define West Sub’s unraveling: Patient census, millions in unbilled services, the halving of the medical staff. But in an interview with Sean Lintow Sr., Oak Park’s top building official, he said the failed elevator meant there were no longer any functioning elevators on the campus. I asked him just how many elevators there were at West Sub. “Twenty-eight,” he said.
More than two dozen elevators, all of them busted.
How do you suppose that small problem fits into Prasad’s plan to reopen West Sub either this month or next month?
Journal’s down a columnist: Congratulations to Vincent Gay on his appointment Monday to the District 97 school board. He narrowly lost the election the last time around. And his appointment to fill a vacancy is a smart move by the school board.
That said, the Journal has now lost a wonderfully bright and relatable voice from our ranks of opinion columnists. Thanks, Vincent, for a year’s worth of terrific columns.
Do something!: Once again, the head of the union local for firefighters in Forest Park, Travis Myers, showed up at a council meeting and urged/cajoled/shamed the council to find some way to raise funds to ease the burden on overworked firefighters/paramedics. What will it take for this council to face up to its looming financial crisis?