Hainesville, IL, Website

Hainesville, Illinois.The lexicon of psychiatry has an apt description for the state of tiny Hainesville. Yet, identity crisis may be an understatement as the Village of Hainesville transforms itself from a quiet pastoral village of 134 people into a bona fide suburb of 1,400 and growing.

When the development under way and on the drawing board is completed, the population could pass 4,000, which would be a 30-fold increase in less than seven years, said Mayor George Benjamin, who was first elected in 1977.

The formerly sleepy little outpost at the intersection of Illinois Routes 120 and 134 in central Lake County is having to grapple with new issues of land planning, density, sewer hook-ups and impact fees -- quite a departure from the past.

What does a village with a mere 38 households need as far as city services? A part-time police force, a village hall, and an old Round Lake schoolhouse was about all it had.

Comprehensive plan? Not exactly. Only recently has the village hired a land planner to consult on a planned unit development. Budget? A new computer will help Hainesville's new treasurer modernize finances, which had been tracked by ledger, said Trustee Linda Soto, a new resident of the village's first big subdivision.

In just a few years, the village has gone from writing 10 to 15 checks a month to issuing 60 to 65 checks, said Treasurer Holly Custod.

"The federal government still believes there's only 134 people here," she added.

To remedy this little misunderstanding, which costs the village $81 a person, the village requested a special census, which is scheduled to be completed in the summer of 1996. As a result, Hainesville expects its state funds to rise to $95,000 a year from $12,000, Soto said, noting that the village will probably need another special census in two years.

After 140 years of agrarian tranquillity -- except for maybe the traffic noise from busy Route 120 in recent years -- Hainesville now blends in rather seamlessly with its neighbors, Grayslake and Round Lake. Rows of new single-family homes have sprouted up all through the northeast quadrant of the village. And the northwest side may soon look the same.

Deer Point Homes Development Corp. created the village's first and biggest subdivision, and U.S. Shelter Group Inc.'s recent groundbreaking will complete the section. Across Hainesville Road from the current construction work is another 150-acre parcel that has been optioned to Deer Point Homes, which hopes to build a 500-unit development of townhouses and single-family homes.

In its zeal for development, Hainesville benefits from good, nearby transportation, including Metra. Other perks are prospects for good job growth in central Lake County, as well as the good reputation of Grayslake schools, which take in more than half of Hainesville's children, local developers said

From many new residents' perspectives, Hainesville's small-town charm was an important lure.

"What we really liked about [Hainesville] was that even with the growth boom going on, Hainesville would never be really big," Soto said. "My concern -- and it seemed to be a lot of other people's -- was preserving the historic charm that Hainesville has to offer."

Residents still proudly celebrate Hainesville's distinction as the oldest incorporated town in Lake County (1847). A writer of its charter is said to have been none other than Abraham Lincoln, a friend of the village's father Elijah M. Haines, whose brother, John, was a mayor of Chicago.

The old Hainesville is still evident in a few old barns busting with bales of hay, some grazing cows and the Country Boutique, in a quaint little building situated where Hainesville Road meets Route 120.

Though resigned to growth as inevitable, antique store proprietor Barbara Bonde said she misses all the open space. As a little girl she summered on nearby Round Lake when the area depended on dirt roads.

Bonde opened her shop in 1966, first across the road in the village's former court for speeders, then moved the building across the street and added it to the former Wipper's Corners general store, which at the time did not have indoor plumbing.

The little worn shop now looks oddly out of place across from a modern gas station and next to the village's spanking new Edward Hines Lumber Co.

Bonde's only complaint: "I personally wonder how the area will take all these people, traffic-wise."

With all the new people, the village has for the first time found itself in need of laws requiring dog tags, leashes, animal excrement, and fence specifications, said Trustee Dan Barrett, chairman of the ordinance committee.

"All the residential ordinances that you take for granted in other communities were not here," Soto added. "You can't call the police and ask them to enforce something that's not on the books."

In addition, the village is learning the ropes of managing development.

Barrett said the new board has brought impact fees to help support services, such as parks and schools and has a new park requirement for developers. The village has also hired a land planner to consult on a planned unit development currently being negotiated for the large parcel on the west side of the village.

Deer Point Homes will be paying substantially more impact fees for this new development, Barrett said.

When Deer Point first came into town, it found an inexperienced board trying to do its best for the village, said company president Rich Pietranek.

"They didn't really know what to do so there was a lot of hand-holding, a lot of teeth gnashing because they wanted to do things the right way," he said. "They didn't have the financial wherewithal to bring in the outside agencies to help them."

The good news was that they wanted the development, he added.

Deer Point Homes opened its Deer Point Trails subdivision out of a trailer in August 1993 and sold out the 200 homes on 80 acres for an average price of $160,000 two and a half years later, Pietranek said.

The company purchased an adjacent 80 acres from what was once Hainesville's largest landowner, Grayslake Gelatin Co., and started two more subdivisions, the Sanctuary, priced between $155,990 and $189,990, and the Settlement, priced between $116,490 and $137,990. Both are more than half sold out. A total of 378 houses will be built on the 160 acres when all is said and done, Pietranek said.

Land values have doubled since Deer Point first bought land in 1991, he said.

As part of the deal with Grayslake Gelatin, the company also bought an option for an additional 150 acres on the west side of the village around Cranberry Lake, which according to a local history, took its name from the 200 bushels of cranberries once harvested annually in the marshes around the lake.

Pietranek is still negotiating density issues with the village as well as sewer hook-ups with Lake County. He said he is optimistic he will break ground by the end of the summer or late fall of 1996.

On property adjacent to Deer Point Trails, U.S. Shelter Group Inc. of Itasca is already well underway with its Misty Hill Farm subdivision. The project includes 177 single-family homes, priced from $130,990 to $173,990 on 62 acres, said company president Jack Sorenson.

The developer's contribution to the village's infrastructure was a 400,000-gallon capacity water tower, which is more than enough to accommodate future growth, Sorenson said. Deer Point Homes also contributed to the village's water needs by building a new well.

The lion's share of Hainesville's new residents appears to be young families, and both Grayslake and Round Lake schools are already bracing for the new infusion of

Each district recently passed a referendum that will add a new elementary school in Grayslake and allow building additions for schools in Round Lake to accommodate the estimated 200 to 300 new students each district is expecting annually, according to local officials.

The seeds for the suburbanization of Hainesville were planted back when Mayor Benjamin was first elected. In those days Hainesville's coffers were dependent on catching speeders.

"We allow 10 miles over the limit before we write [tickets]," the mayor said carefully, sensitive to the old charge of Hainesville as speed trap.

Benjamin's first order of business was doubling the policeman's pay to $2 an hour. But Benjamin had bigger plans for his little town. He figured the town's location on busy Route 120 would also provide good visibility for developers' interests.

"We had the land available for development," he said. "We wanted to grow a little bit -- controlled growth, nothing wild like some of the other towns -- because we can only have so much growth because of our land space."

It took a decade and a half and nine false starts with various developers before ground was broken on Hainesville's first big development, Benjamin said. But it looks as though the action will not stop until all of Hainesville's big parcels are subdivided.

Large-scale development probably would not have occurred if so much land had not become available.

After Hainesville's largest landowner, John Epstein, second-generation patriarch of Grayslake Gelatin Co., died, his family started selling land in 1989 to help pay estate taxes, said Laurie Epstein, his daughter and president of the company.

Before her father died, Epstein said, in the mid-80s the company sold 600 acres to the Northbrook Sports Club, a trap and skeet gun club. But the family is under no pressure to sell any more land, she said.

Meanwhile, the police are now up to $9 an hour, and the village has three new squad cars and a new police chief, Benjamin said. Responsibilities for fire protection and parks are, like the schools, split between neighboring Round Lake and Grayslake.

Now that residential growth has taken off, some are concerned that commercial growth is not following fast enough.

"If they don't put some commercial in this town, it's not going to help the village, it's going to harm it," said Trustee Charles Green, who first moved his automotive repair business and then his residence to Hainesville during the 1970s.

"You've got to have a certain amount of income over and above taxes. Residential taxes will not pay enough to even support the homes if you think of the plowing of the snow and everything. You've got maintenance of the streets, sidewalks, lighting, a sewer system."

He estimated local taxes amounted to about $125 a house. Most of the taxes paid by residents go to the schools, he said. He, as well as well as other trustees, speculated the village would have to address the possibility of raising taxes in the near future.

Benjamin pointed out that the new Hines Lumber, which opened a 12,000-square-foot store on Route 120 and Hainesville Road a year ago, now pays an average of $10,000 in sales taxes a month to the village. The village is currently operating in the black, he said.

Still, Green said, he would like to see Deer Point Homes, whose homes now comprise the bulk of Hainesville, hurry up its plans for commercial development.

Pietranek said he will go ahead as soon has he has tenants for a planned little strip mall on Route 120 across from Deer Point Trails.

So what is ahead for Hainesville? Mayor Benjamin is scheduled to retire in 1997, having anointed Linda Soto as his hand-picked successor. But his big plans live on. He has got an eye on a new village hall, and, he said, there is another 190 acres or so south of Route 120 that are perfect for development