The Esquire Theatre was brand new, and
several other businesses had located near it on Springfield’s
burgeoning southwest side. “South Grand and West Grand
District is Rapidly Developing,” read a headline in the
Illinois State Journal of Jan. 28, 1938. The greatest excitement
surrounded the new Piggly Wiggly store, where Aunt Jemima herself
would make pancakes for patrons on opening day. Four years later,
the City Council proudly renamed West Grand Avenue for Gen. Douglas
MacArthur, a decision, the council said, that “received
immediate enthusiastic approval of patriotic citizens.”
Just like the old soldier, MacArthur
Boulevard faded away in the eyes of residents who lived on it and
near it. Traffic and businesses took over homes one by one; by
1970, residents were fighting plans to remove the island at
MacArthur and South Grand Avenue to speed up traffic flow.
“It’s a shame that we have to always go with the idea
that we have to move traffic a little faster,” complained
Walter Simhauser at a public hearing.
The residents lost that battle and many
others, and MacArthur south of South Grand descended into urban
uglification, becoming an all-commercial jungle of pavement, parking lots, and signs. The
vacant Esquire and Kmart buildings contribute to the blight. Still,
things could be worse, and the best signals that MacArthur’s
fortunes may be rising are the businesses you don’t see along
that troubled road. Residents of neighborhoods to the west and east
have organized to defeat zoning requests for developments they say
would have made traffic and noise problems worse.
“That fight has to continue forever and
ever,” says Ward 7 Ald. Judy Yeager, who has stood in
solidarity with the neighbors. “We have to be vigilant, and
we have to be consistent.”
One of the MacArthur vigilantes is Doug
Dougherty, who lives on Dial Court, the first street west of
MacArthur. He’s been battling adverse zoning changes almost
since moving there 24 years ago. At first he was more willing to
compromise with developers who made promises to neighbors in
exchange for withdrawal of opposition. But he and his cohorts have
hardened, as promise after promise has gone unfulfilled. In 1984
Dougherty did battle with the late George Kerasotes, who tore down
several homes, some without city permission, for Esquire parking
lots and then failed to screen them as he had promised to do. About
five years ago, Dougherty and other Dial Court residents won a
promise from the Standard Mutual Insurance Co. that the company
would take steps to prevent cars from its expanded parking lot from
exiting onto Dial Court, but the traffic still spills onto the residential street. So Dougherty has had it with
compromise: “We don’t want our neighborhood to be slowly
eroded away. We want to avoid death by a thousand cuts.”
Last year, when Harper Oil announced plans
for a big gas station and convenience store on one of the Esquire
parking lots on MacArthur, Dougherty took petitions door to door
for blocks around and discussed with neighbors how the business
wasn’t a good fit. After neighbors turned out in big numbers
at a zoning hearing to voice their opposition, the plans were
dropped. Earlier this year, a request by Prairie Farms to expand
its trucking facility encountered similar opposition from
neighbors, who were concerned about trucks’ backing across
four lanes of MacArthur traffic. The zoning case is pending.
“We get accused of being rigid,”
says Dougherty, who, several times burned, doesn’t completely
disagree. “We just think there should be no more
conditional-use permits, no more variances, no further zoning
changes.”
Some bright spots have appeared on MacArthur,
such as the handsome new Urgent Care building and the new
Walgreens, both of which have nice landscaping in accordance with
former Mayor Karen Hasara’s beautification ordinance. The
well-run (and full) Town and Country Shopping Center and the Town
and Country Bank continue to be strong anchors for the area. And
neighbors have given enthusiastic support to the proposed Cherry Grove
Shoppes, which would bring 45,000 square feet of specialty retail shops
in a variety of small buildings to the abandoned Esquire property.
Developer Todd Smith of the Garrison Group said last week that his
company is negotiating with the Illinois Department of Transportation
over street requirements. “We have strong interest from
prospective tenants,” Smith says, “but we don’t want
to commit to them until we see how the ingress and egress are going to
work.”
If it comes through, Cherry Grove could set
an architecturally pleasing and quiet retail tone for
MacArthur’s future and make the battles against gas stations
and truck terminals feel all the more worthwhile. Dougherty
acknowledges that neighbors have been so busy reacting to negative
proposals, they haven’t spent much time planning what
they’d like to see. “There has been no real vision of
what MacArthur could look like 15 years from now,” he says.
That can be the next step.
This article appears in Sep 8-14, 2005.
