New business group promotes Mount Prospect's south side

Mount Prospect's south side may not own as high a profile as other areas of town.

The corner of Busse and Algonquin roads does not boast a mall comparable to the Randhurst Shopping Center or the upscale residential/retail mix of The Emerson or The Lofts at Village Centre in the downtown.

But it is buzzing with business activity and bursting with pedestrian, bicycle and vehicular traffic.

What the south end has lacked is a unified voice for its merchants, like that provided, for example, by the Mount Prospect Downtown Merchants Association.

Since February, area business people and village officials have been working to build an organization to provide that voice.

The group has been meeting at Labor Ready, 1644 W. Algonquin Road, a staffing agency offering temporary labor for construction and industrial jobs.

Labor Ready's Monazza Zafar said the goal is to work to address such issues as parking lot access, better lighting and pedestrian safety.

Accidents at the busy intersection of Algonquin and Busse are a particular concern.

"It's difficult and maybe a little overwhelming for some people to cross the streets in those areas," said Mount Prospect police Officer Bill Roscop, one of the village officials working with the group.

The area, however, has many strengths, said Clare Sloan, a neighborhood planner with the village of Mount Prospect, who also is working closely with the group.

"It has some of the highest traffic counts in the whole village," she said, with two popular upscale restaurants, Jameson's Char House, 1702 W. Algonquin Road, and Flamingo's Seafood, 1590 S. Busse Road.

Sloan said there are about 77 businesses in the area.

Many of the businesses are of the mom-and-pop variety, several of them ethnic in character and aimed at immigrant populations.

Pedestrian counts, Sloan said, are enviably high, stemming from the concentration of multi-family residences in the area.

"I think that's something that people are trying to create in other places, and we already have it," she said.

As other communities are trying to develop high-density housing near retail centers, the south end of Mount Prospect has already achieved that aim, she said.

Zafar, a former Mount Prospect resident, said the biggest challenge for the group has been getting business owners to attend.

"We just need to get more people involved," she said.

Sloan said one reason behind the low attendance may be that there are "a lot of small businesses, and the people who own them are putting so much time into them that they don't have as much time to spend on a business association."

Sloan said the village is letting the businesses take the lead in creating an identity.

"We're not trying to have the village brand the area," she said. "We want the business group to do it."

Among the projects in the group's pipeline is a business directory, so that people living in the area know what is available to them.

One area where the village has helped is in the relationship fostered between area businesses and the police. Community Service Officer Carlos Huizar has been particularly active as a liaison.

In the future, Roscop said, the village's new Crime Free Housing program will address crime issues in the area's rental properties.

As for the problem of pedestrian safety, the police will utilize the recently mobilized traffic unit, cracking down on motorists who blow through stop signs or red lights, he said.

Bobby Bruno, landlord of the Crystal Court Shopping Center in the 1700 block of West Algonquin Road, said the area has become more vibrant in the last three years, particularly since, as a result of community policing, crime, once a problem, has dropped in the area. In addition, he said, landlords are doing a better job of screening residential tenants.

Now, people are "spending money, they're going out and shopping and they're doing things that we were hoping would be done when we built the center."