Two Groups Foster Forest Park Independents

Over the past decade, the town of Forest Park, Illinois, situated about 10 miles west of Chicago, has gone through a retail transformation. Once overshadowed by the popular shopping destination of nearby Oak Park, Forest Park has become a haven for independent businesses, said Augie Aleksy, the owner of Centuries & Sleuths Bookstore.

Aleksy, who moved his bookstore from Oak Park to Forest Park in 2000, gives much of the credit for Forest Park's independent business-friendly environment to the Forest Park Main Street Redevelopment Corporation (Forest Park Main Street).

But, he told BTW, although independent businesses were finding a welcoming home in Forest Park, one problem remained: Potential shoppers in many of the surrounding suburbs didn't know about these changes.

In 2003, the owners of two local businesses founded the Madison Street Merchants Association (or M2), an independent business alliance that Aleksy said functions as a kind of unofficial "promotional arm" of Forest Park Main Street to get the message out. To do this, the members of M2 pool their resources and promote the area through advertisements in newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Magazine (a magazine geared to more affluent area residents).

M2 was founded by Jayne Ertel and Heidi Vance of Team Blonde (a jewelry store) and Cecilia Hardacker and Tonya Hart of Two Fish (a store that sells art glass). "They sent out letters to merchants on Madison, requesting they come to meetings," Aleksy explained. "And more and more people starting joining. It's a no-nonsense group. We have a rule: if you have a complaint, you need a solution if you're going to bring it up at a meeting. We didn't want it to turn into a whine session."

The result, Aleksy reported, has been an increase in the number of shoppers in the now-vibrant Forest Park, which, in turn, is attracting new independent businesses to the area. "We're making people aware of what's here and how accessible Forest Park is," he said. "It's an awareness thing." The group's efforts have centered around clearing up the misconceptions of residents in surrounding suburban areas who believed that going to Forest Park was no different than going into Chicago, complete with parking hassles and crime. M2 has done a good job creating awareness, even attracting the attention of the "local television stations, which have done shorts about the area," said Aleksy.

Now, because things are going so well in terms of increased traffic, the groups are dealing with practical measures, such as a parking study to see if it's more beneficial to expand surface parking or to build a parking garage. --David Grogan