It takes a certain kind of man to build a town.

A bit of ego, perhaps, and a lot of money, to be certain. Frequently, he must be willing to fight noisy neighbors and a recalcitrant city hall.

Some put their thumbprints all over the town, building it from scratch. Others greatly expand the tiny burg already there. They also can be fairly generous in giving back to the community.

These town-builders all have one thing in common, however, no matter what the community. They're known as "The Man Who Built (Insert Town Name Here)."

If you're filling in that blank in the Western suburbs, four names fit the bill: Harold Moser, Jay Stream, Joe Keim and Kent Shodeen.

Joe Naper founded Naperville, but Harold Moser built it.

The town had only accumulated about 3,500 residents in the 120 years after Naper founded the town in 1831 - it was far from the suburb-on-steroids you see today.

Naperville started beefing up when Harold Moser needed to drum up business for the family lumber yard.

His first house, part of the 43-home Forest Preserve neighborhood just west of downtown, sold for $9,000 in 1952.

Under his Macom Corp. banner, Moser would go on to build Cress Creek, the Chicago area's first golf course community. Pick a neighborhood in Naperville, and you're likely to see Moser's handiwork: Aero Estates, Cedar Glen, Maplebrook, Brookdale, Moser Highlands and Naper Carriage Hill, among others.

By the early 1990s, one of every three homeowners in Naperville had a direct connection to him. His company had built a third of the 23,000 homes in town.

Moser, known as "Mr. Naperville," attributes his success to hard work. Early on, he put in seven days a week, setting aside Saturdays and Sundays to sit in the model homes and make sales. The hard work paid off. As of the last census count last year, Naperville had 117,091 residents, making it the nation's the 11th-fastest-growing city.

Not only did Moser help build Naperville, he tried to make sure it ran smoothly. He was city judge for 18 years, township clerk for a dozen, police and fire commission chairman for 15 and also chamber of commerce president.

Today, he's 85 and retired, but he still is giving to Naperville, pledging $1 million last spring to the city's Millennium Carillon project. The donation will help construct the carillon's tower.

The nation had put everything on hold to fight World War II, and victorious soldiers had come home, eager to start families and ready to move out of Mom and Dad's converted two-flat once those babies arrived.

Jay Stream smelled a business opportunity. The young entrepreneur founded Durable Construction Co. in 1949 with a $600 loan against his new car.

He began putting up a slew of houses in Wheaton but had a vision for something more. Stream wanted to end the commuting culture. He wanted to build a town where you could both work and live. A trip into Chicago would be a treat, not a necessity.

Local lore holds that Stream first pitched his idea to Naperville but the powers-that-be told him no - and to go start his own town.

The village of Carol Stream incorporated in 1959. Stream named it after his daughter, Carol.

Stream's first move was to build 100 modest, ranch-style homes at the northwest corner of Gary and North avenues. But he also laid out a plan for the rest of the village - anything industrial would go east of Gary; any homes would go west.

The village followed the blueprint fairly closely - the business park allows Carol Stream to avoid levying a village property tax. Other home builders took the ball and ran with it. The village, which marked its 40th anniversary this year, tripled during the '70s to 15,000 people and now is at about 40,000.

Stream is 77 and continues to raise horses on a ranch in San Luis Obispo, Calif. He moved to California in 1965 but shuttled back to town to monitor progress over the years.

Downtown Geneva wouldn't be quite as charming if it wasn't for Kent Shodeen.

The hard-driving developer owns the Herrington Inn and several restaurants and leases space to shop owners on the renowned South Third Street and the riverfront. He also is responsible for the 110 condominiums along the Fox River just north of downtown.

All of this from a man who was going to become a doctor until he dropped out of Northwestern University in the early 1960s to sell insurance in Batavia. He had a wife and baby at home, so he decided to try his hand at something new - home building. If his first house didn't sell, Shodeen decided, he'd move into it.

He didn't get the chance, building several more houses before stepping up to Carriage Crest, his first major subdivision, in Batavia.

Shodeen hasn't looked back since. His resume includes the Jewel/Osco on Randall Road in St. Charles, a Dominick's across the street, several office buildings and hundreds of houses and town houses in Geneva and St. Charles.

The project he's most proud of is Mill Creek, a 2,000-home neighborhood that took nine years to come to fruition and very likely will become its own village some day after builders lay the last brick west of Geneva.

Like most developers, Shodeen has played hardball with city hall on a number of occasions. His reputation is that of a tough businessman with some well-timed jokes up his sleeve.

He still is going strong at 61 and is humble about his community service, which includes a sizable donation to Delnor-Community Hospital that helped get the emergency room built. Still, Shodeen said when he started he never envisioned he'd become the man who built up Geneva.

"We just do the best we can, and the rest will take care of itself," he said.

Nor did Joe Keim start out envisioning he'd be the man who built up Wheaton.

Keim got out of the Army in the 1950s after learning a bit about construction and, with a paltry $30 in his pocket, drove to Chicago where his brother was working as a carpenter.

Like Shodeen, Keim worked full time and spent nights and weekends building his first house, which he sold, only to build another.

In the four decades since then, Keim has built and sold thousands of homes in neighborhoods like Pine Hill in Lisle, Hunt Club in St. Charles and Eagle Brook in Geneva.

However, it is Wheaton where he is most famous.

Gambling $15 million in 1985 for prime land known as the Rice Farm, Keim built more than 700 houses in the Danada Farm subdivision, which dominates Wheaton's southern half.

He still is going today, focusing more on building custom houses with hefty price tags. When he's not working, he finds time to take hunting trips to Africa, or more locally, taking his grandson out west of St. Charles to do the same.

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