GazeboNews

LF Releases Study On West Side Traffic

About 20 residents attended an informational meeting about traffic and drainage woes in the west side of Lake Forest. To keep the communication flowing, the City is hosting another meeting on Sept. 10 (6:30 p.m. at the Lake Forest High School West Campus), and it has posted the presentation materials on its website---click here to get there. The consultants---Kenig, Lindgren, O'Hara, Aboons, Inc., studied the neighborhood bordered by Old Mill Road and Conway Road and Oak Knoll Drive and Waukegan Road. The City is considering building an affordable housing development in this area at Telegraph Road and Everett Road. The 28-page traffic study evaluates existing traffic conditions, summarizes the causes for the traffic jams and includes eight pages of preliminary recommendations on how to resolve the problems.

Lake Forest, This Is Lake Bluff

This was a historic week and not just because it was the 101st annual Lake Forest Day or the launch of the Boy Scouts' 100th anniversary or even because those two American journalists were sprung from a hellish sentence in North Korea. It was historic because the Lake Forest City Council and the Lake Bluff Village Board met together for the first time since any of the officials can remember.

"You might think that these two bodies, governing neighboring communities with much in common, would occasionally meet together to discuss common issues, but this was a first," said Lake Bluff Village Trustee Rick Lesser, who submitted this photo to GazeboNews--that's him on the left with Lake Forest Alderman John Looby. The Lake Forest/Lake Bluff Senior Center brought the two groups together to present a report on its strategic plan. Mr. Looby said it was good for both communities to hear the same information at the same time. "I believe there will be more (meetings) in the future on programs and issues that are important to both communities,"  he said.

LB Village Trustee Rick Lesser with LF Alderman John Looby on Monday night

 

New Home For Municipal Services In LF

Editor's note: Lake Forest's new municipal services building opens on the far west side of town on Monday. But if that's too much of a trek, you can still get some of the same services taken care of via a kiosk set up at City Hall on Deerpath Road. Here's the text of a press release about the new building:

On Monday, August 3, 2009, The City of Lake Forest municipal operations will open the doors at its new location at 800 North Field Drive (north end of Conway Office Park adjacent to the Tollway). The current Municipal Services Building located at 110 East Laurel Avenue will be closed. The new Municipal Services Building is resident-friendly and provides the space needed for efficient, safe operations in an 83,000 square-foot garage and 27,000 square-foot administrative office building. This is one of the largest capital improvement projects in the City’s history and will be funded in part by the sale of the current 10-acre Laurel Avenue site.

To Market, To Market

Friday's glorious weather brought people outdoors and into our towns, where there was plenty to do and buy. In Lake Forest, merchants set up shop for a Market Square sidewalk sale, while in Lake Bluff, the Farmer's Market oozed with mid-summer's bounty of berries, tomatoes, greens, flowers, baked goods, fresh cheeses and other hard-to-pass-on treats. GazeboNews Photographer Cyn Sansing Mycoskie of cynimage photography took these photos while making the rounds of the towns.

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

Photos by Cyn Sansing Mycoskie

Sailing Scrapbook

Here are some photos of Friday's North Shore Cup, shot just a few feet from all the action. The race is a junior sailing regatta hosted by Lake Forest Sailing, and it drew about 80 sailors from Milwaukee to Chicago. The kids competed in Lasers, 420s and Optis in conditions that included warm temps, hazy skies and choppy water. Lake Forest's Hunter Johnstone and Katie Hall won the 420 class series and Spence Cook won one race in the Opti series. A huge thanks to Sailing Director Joey Harris for inviting GazeboNews Editor Adrienne Fawcett to shoot the race from a crash boat piloted by Ryan Hill.

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

Photos by Adrienne Fawcett

Go North on Western

Lake Forest is going to become a roadwork sandwich this week. On Monday, Western Avenue is switching to northbound from southbound between Westminster and Laurel. Consider yourself warned: Go north on Western.

This should come as good news if you're a Jewel devotee who lives south of the store. But if you're north of the Jewel, life and shopping are not going to improve with this change. Those on the east side of the tracks need to drive south on McKinley, west on Westminster and north on Western to get to the Jewel  and other businesses on that stretch of the construction zone. People on the west side of downtown should go south on Greenbay Road, east on Westminster and north on Western.

On the other side of town, renovations to Waukegan Avenue are beginning this week, and parts of that artery will become a one-way street. The project involves replacing a water main beneath Waukegan from Route 60 to Gage Lane. Also expected to begin this week is Phase 2 of the Waukegan Road Business District Streetscape Enhancement Project.

Woodland Road between Oakwood and Western is expected to open up early next week, three weeks ahead of schedule, said Ramesh Kanapareddy, assistant city engineer. When asked why both sides of Woodland were closed at the same time (which has been vexing to shoppers), he explained: "Paving and stripping operations are done concurrently for an entire pavement block, not in sections, to avoid numerous seams (potential areas for water infiltration) in pavement."

The Lowdown On The Tall Grass

This spring, the City of Lake Forest decided to stop mowing public parkways on several main arteries in town, a move that City Forester Peter Gordon said is based on two timely trends: going green and cutting costs. Over the course of the 30-week mowing season, the no-mow decision will save $30,000 in wages and reduce by 200 gallons the amount of herbicides and pesticides used by the City.

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

Lake Forest Post Office For Sale

The U.S. Postal Service is seeking a buyer for the Lake Forest Post Office, a circa 1932 art deco building that's in the National Register of Historic Districts as well as one of Lake Forest's Historic Preservation Districts.

U.S.P.S. District Manager Robert Hart last week sent a notification to "postal customers" in Lake Forest, informing them that the Postal Service wants to sell its building and move retail operations to a smaller site in Lake Forest. The note does not specify where in Lake Forest it hopes to relocate. (Please hit the continue reading button for the full text of the note.)

"They are not committing to anything at this point," said City Manager Robert Kiely in an e-mail to GazeboNews. "By law, they will have to entertain proposals from any interested property owner and then evaluate them with input from the City." He said the U.S.P.S. wants to downsize from the 6,000 square feet it has at 230 Northgate Street to 2,000 square feet. He also said the U.S.P.S. has not yet listed the building, nor has it decided on an asking price. "They will be doing all the necessary due diligence studies before any listing (appraisal, survey, etc.)," he said. "They will be working with a real estate firm, but we do not know who at this point."

Photo of the Post Office in downtown Lake Forest, courtesy of Gunnar Soderlind

The Lake Forest Post Office has a long history. To find out more about the building, we turned to the experts: Gail Hodges of the Lake Forest Preservation Foundation; Stephen Vignocchi of the Special Collections/Archives department at Lake Forest College's Donnelley-Lee Library; Cathy Czerniak of the City of Lake Forest; and Robert Willms, former Postmaster from 1967-1990. Here is the information they shared:

Prairies On The Parkways

The City of Lake Forest is testing out a new look on several public parkways by letting the grass grow to prairie-like lengths. City Forester Peter Gordon said it's an attempt to expand natural greenspace while cutting costs on gas and labor. The crews do mow a narrow path along the curb to form a buffer between the tall grasses and the street. "We've already made a reduction of 37 mowing hours," he told GazeboNews. The high-grass areas include parkways on McKinley Road, Western Avenue, Westleigh Road, Waukegan Road and Old Elm Road. The city also planted a seed mix of prairie grasses and perennial flowers on a hilly area opposite the Barat campus. What do you think of the new prairie-on-the-parkway look? Leave a comment!

'Nightmare' In Lake Forest

New Line/Platinum Dunes is shooting a remake of famed horror flick "A Nightmare On Elm Street" in the Chicago area this summer, and some scenes are going to hit frighteningly close to home for a certain Lake Forest neighborhood. According to a website called Fangoria, filming last week took place in a home off Deerpath Road, which is reportedly the site of a "major kill scene" in the movie. The website also reports that the producers are seeking extras for paid positions and are particularly interested in "real" police officers, firefighters, paramedics, baristas, bookstore clerks and "press types." Hmmm....Anyone interested? Visit Fangoria.com for more info.

Local Groups Plot Their Plant Sales

Don't despair if you missed Lake Forest Open Lands' Native Plant Sale two weeks ago or the Lake Bluff Garden Club's Garden Market last weekend. On Friday and Saturday, the Lake Forest/Lake Bluff Rotary Club is selling flats, potted plants and hanging baskets at its 10th Annual plant sale from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Lake Forest's historic Market Square. Visit the Rotary Club's website for more info. Also on Saturday, Pasquesi's hosts the WGN Radio Fan Van Saturday from 10 a.m. to noon during the Proven Winners' Think Spring Celebration. Proven Winners staff will pass out free gardener's idea books and other goodies, and they'll answer questions about their brand. ... Come rain or shine, The Church of the Holy Spirit's Spring Fair will include a garden plant sale (at which this editor shall toil all day) ... And next week, the Great Lakes Adaptive Sports Association is having a perennial plant symposium from 9 to 10 a.m. at the Gorton Community Center, which costs $20. Lake Forest City Forester Peter Gordon will provide insights on how to chose perennial plants so you'll know what you're buying when you shop at GLASA's 8th annual perennial sale the next day, Thursday May 21, also to be held at Gorton. The sale will include 30 plant varieties, and proceeds will benefit GLASA and Gorton.

Town Tries To Scorch LF Popcorn Record

A small town in Iowa is trying to take away Lake Forest's claim to being home of the World's Largest Popcorn Ball.

Not so fast, said Lori Myles, senior marketing director of The Popcorn Factory, which is headquartered in Lake Forest on West Laurel Drive. The Popcorn Factory holds the current record for the biggest popcorn ball, having created a 3,415-pound, eight-foot round mass in 2006, according to the Guinness Book of Records (That's the Popcorn Factory's record-holder in the photo). But late last month, residents of Sac City set out to create a nine-foot-tall, 5,000 pound globular mass of popcorn, sugar and a syrup mix.

"Sac City's hasn't been approved by Guinness yet,"  said Ms. Myles. "And if you look at the picture, their (creation) is just a blob. It's not an actual ball." It's true that approval by Guinness is pending, but the media is already proclaiming Sac City the winner of this pop competition.

Middlefork Savanna To Expand

Updated Feb. 11, 2009, after the LCFPD commissioners approved the land purchase.

Lake Forest's Middlefork Savanna Forest Preserve is poised to get an additional 19 acres of open space. The Lake County Forest Preserve District Board of Commissioners on Feb. 10 approved an intergovernmental agreement with the City of Lake Forest and Lake Forest Open Lands Association to purchase the property at Bradley Road, Interstate 94 and the Savanna at a cost of $1,050,000.

"This is good for the people of Lake Forest. It's good for the people of Lake County. It's good for Lake Forest Open Lands, and it's good for our corporate partners," said Lake Forest Mayor Michael Rummel. "The only one to lose was Costco, but so be it."

New LF Website Seeks Local Lore

If you have a story to share about Lake Forest, there's no shortage of outlets for your creativity. You can submit an essay, poem, video or song to the "Lake Forest Voices" campaign (deadline is V-Day). You can provide information for a new book called "Downtown Lake Forest." And you can jot down your memories, scan old photos and e-mail them to InsideLakeForest.com, a new "living website" devoted to capturing the city's history.

InsideLakeForest is managed by Susan Kelsey, Lake Forest's economic development coordinator, and Shirley Paddock, a longtime resident of the city and a devotee of local lore. Here they are in the old tunnel beneath the Metra station, which was once used by commuters to get from the warm, dry train to their warm, dry, chauffeur-driven cars.

J. Crew To Open Next Week

Piles of neatly folded polo shirts will soon occupy the beloved Marshall Fields building in downtown Lake Forest: J. Crew is planning a grand opening for Nov. 18. The store is a beehive of activity this week, as retail managers and tradesmen ready the site. Shoppers wanting to get in ahead of the pack can attend a special sneak-peak opening Nov. 17 from 6 to 9 p.m. At that time, J. Crew is offering a 10% discount and will donate a portion of the evening's proceeds to Lake Forest Hospital. RSVP to 847-535-6111.

Much hammering and sawing is taking place in the divided first-floor space next to J. Crew,  

 

Grevers Brings Home Silver

Lake Forest native Matt Grevers won an impressive silver medal in the 100-meter backstroke in the Olympic Games Monday night as his teammate Aaron Piersol put in a repeat Olympic performance to win the gold. Grever's time of 53.11 seconds trailed Piersol's 52.44.

Though he looked disappointed during an after-race interview with an NBC reporter, Grevers was stoic in his responses. "That silver's beautiful," Grevers said. "That's what we wanted, one-two, afterall."

Gone Sailing

It was another glorious morning at Sunrise Beach, breezy and sunny with nary a fly in site. A lone kayaker launched his boat onto the undulating waves; an older couple held hands along the shore; dogs frolicked in the coves, and a sailboat passed slowly by, towing a small boat behind it. The morning's only dark spot was a large pile of dog doo on the path to the beach.