State Stix May 1989

State Stix

On a glacial island in the south suburbs

That's where you're standing if you visit the Little Red School House Nature Center of Willow Springs. The island is a 10,000-acre mound of glacial till and clay. Known as Mount Forest Island, it is what was left after the last glacier melted and Old Lake Chicago drained north into the Des Plaines Valley and south into the Sag Valley about 10,000 years ago. The island is now part of the 30,000 acres of forest preserves in the southern suburbs. Old Lake Chicago is an earlier and deeper version of Lake Michigan, and The Little Red School House, a fairly recent addition to the landscape, is about 100 years old.
Source: Peter Dring, director, Little Red School House Nature Center, Willow Springs.

Menu at Chicago Heights Bloom-Fest '88 at Bloom High School:

Homemade Italian, Polish, German, Greek, Danish, Mexican-American, Afro-American, Swedish, Hindu, Jewish, Oriental and American food plus International pastries.
Source: Bloom-Fest '88 Poster.

Dixie Square Mall in Harvey

Site of automotive rampage perpetrated by Jo-liet Jake and Elwood Blues while eluding Illinois law enforcement officials.
Source: The Blues Brothers.

St. James of the Sag

Located on the tip of Mount Forest Island near Lemont, St. James is the oldest active church in the Chicago metro area. It was built in 1833, just in time for the Irish. They came to the area in the 1830s, along with the Chinese and the Germans, to dig the Illinois and Michigan Canal. The church is near a site where Marquette and Joliet camped in 1675.
Source: Dring; Poems from the Sangamon by John Knoepfle.

Newest Illinois mound

The village of Matteson is planning to build a giant mound. In referring to "mound" it does not mean a big grassy knoll with flaming pipes sticking out of it — though the state is running out of those.

The mound Matteson has in mind was inspired by pre-Columbian Cahokia Mounds that rise out of the Mississippi bottomlands near St. Louis, giving pleasure to the eye. That's what Matteson wants to do for people driving along on I-57 looking for slag heaps or anything to relieve flatness. A landscaped mound rising out of Matteson and visible from a great distance will satisfy that need. Besides making people happier, it will let them know they are near Matteson and not some other Illinois place. Planners have not yet determined whether I-57 will go past the mound, over it or through it.
Source: Judith Kramer, director of community relations, Village of Matteson.

Clogged traffic, sterile corporate campuses and isolated housing tracts?

Expecting to grow from 11,500 to 30,000 by the year 2000, Matteson is trying to avoid becoming just another big burb. The village's plan calls for a bridge over 1-57, linking the old east and the new west side of town. Patterned after the "classical" bridges in Chicago, it would enable people to walk, bicycle or drive across the highway to get to shops and recreation areas — or to a village green, which would become the physical center of town.
Source: Same as above.

The suburbs: class of 1990

Harbingers of the future, suburban schools are becoming less white and more culturally, economically and racially diverse. And suburban students seem to like it that way.

Today 23 percent of the students in suburban Cook and DuPage counties are minorities, up from 12 percent 10 years ago.

In suburban Cook County, with 310,939 students, 73.3 percent of the students are white; 22.5 percent are black; 6.1 percent are Hispanic and 6.0 percent are Asian.

In DuPage County, with 115,797 students, 87.7 percent are white, 2.4 percent are black; 3.6 percent are Hispanic, and 6.1 percent are Asian.
Source: "Minorities surge in Chicago's suburban ring," Chicago Reporter, April 1989.

Dolton: 'The achievements have been big'

Named an Illinois Certified City in March, Dolton has attracted 20 new businesses and over 550 new jobs in the past three years. In 1982 the Steel Products Plant closed down, causing major job loss in the community. Now the former plant is a multi-tenant industrial complex housing Innovative Packaging, Corrugated Systems, Technical Chemicals, Andrew Corporation and general office space. Precisionaire, a furnace filter manufacture, is housed in part of the Rexnord facility, which made chains for farm machinery and closed in 1985. Empty factory buildings are now scarce in Dolton.
Source: Robert Pilat, assistant to the mayor, Dolton.

South suburbs: 'The image has been negative'

"The South Suburban Mayors and Managers Association, the Regional Economic Development Coordinating Council and the South Suburban Chambers of Commerce have tried to change the image. People need to know more of what the south suburbs have to offer."
Source: Same as above.

General funds

At the end of March the state's general funds balance was $297,648 million. The average daily available balance in March was $315.627 million.
Source: Office of the Comptroller.

Unemployment rates

In March the nation's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 5.0 percent, the lowest since December 1973. In Illinois it was 5.6 percent, up 0.4 percent from last month.

There were 5.983 million people in the state's labor force in March, a gain of 7,000 that set a new all-time record. But there weren't enough jobs to go around: 5.648 million people were working, 15,000 fewer than last month; 335,000 were job hunting, 22,000 more than last month. Some of the job decline was due to temporary layoffs of nonteaching educational staff and workers over spring break.

In the April magazine we listed the final unemployment rates for the state's major cities, but did not give the month: It was for December 1988. The final unemployment rates listed below are for January 1989:

Source: Department of Employment Security

Margaret S. Knoepfle

May 1989 | Illinois Issues | 6

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