Economic Alliance to do housing study

“We’ve been talking about this for several years,” said Tim Nugent, president and CEO of the Economic Alliance of Kankakee County. “As we go around to all the different local employers and find out the reasons why people commute here but don’t live here, and one of the things that continually comes up is the lack of the housing.

“We want to do this study so we can justify our efforts to go out and try to find builders, larger builders from the suburban areas and try to attract them down here to do housing development.”

In its request for the ARPA funding, the economic alliance stressed that additional and affordable housing is “critical to the population, growth and development of our community.”

Kankakee County has a population of 107,502 based on the 2020 U.S. Census, a decrease of 5,947 from the 2010 county of 113,449.

The request noted projections anticipate a continued decline of 2.1 percent through 2026, which might be a direct result of the regression of the residential housing industry in the county.

DECLINING CONSTRUCTION

The construction of new homes has been on a steady decline, down 80 percent from previous years, alliance reported. At its peak during the past two decades, more than 600 new housing permits were issued in a single year. In 2021, a total of 125 permits were issued in Kankakee County.

“A lot of the people that used to build houses in the early 2000s when we were really busy, they’ve gone out of business,” Nugent said. “We need more builders who have the ability to come in and do large projects, build gated communities, build communities that have amenities.

“Those are the types of things that we find that the employers want. People would love to live here, live close to where they work rather than commuting from the South Suburbs or from Indiana. We want to turn them into not just commuters, we want to turn them into residents. We need places for them to live.”

The alliance also reported manufacturing has grown 59 percent in the past five years in Kankakee County, and another 10 percent of growth is expected in the next few years.

Tracy Cross & Associates Inc., a consulting group in Schaumburg that specializes in the real estate development industry, would be contracted to do the housing study.

GOALS OF STUDY

The study would look at best market-driven residential development and redevelopment opportunities in Kankakee County.

It would also:

• Determine the depth of the market for residential development during the next five to 10 years.

• Explain the marketability of various forms of housing; offer specific design, product and pricing/rental rates.

• Offer a geographic strategy for the introduction of new housing projects on a five- to 10-year forecast.

• Offer ways for implementing all recommendations such as builder-developer selection and priority ranking of opportunities.

The study results would be relevant for about three to five years and would include field work, data collection and analysis. There’s an eight-week timeframe on the completion of the study.

“We can use that to attract the builders to come here and solve that issue,” Nugent said.

Board member Steve Liehr, who is chairman of the Finance Committee, gave his support to the request by the alliance.

“As a member of the representative to the economic alliance, I know the alliance had presentations upon the need to have a clear understanding of housing in this county,” Liehr said. “This is an important part of moving forward economically, and so this is something that clearly is a major need.”

Board member Steve Hunter said the study is needed to give those local employees who might be living in Frankfort or other South Suburbs the option of living in Kankakee County.

“We need to be able to identify what our needs are and act accordingly in terms of a developer to to create more subdivisions and upper scale housing needs — the $300,000, $400,000 homes which are required by some of the employees who come from different parts of the country to work [here].”