Little engine that could, with your help

Both John McCain and Barack Obama point to small business as the engine that drives the economy. Joe the Plumber surely brought that argument into focus.

With bad news piling on bad news, we've seen our ailing economy sputter a couple more times this month, when a pair of iconic suburban businesses called it quits.

Lattof Chevrolet spent more than 70 years in Arlington Heights - three generations worth of Lattofs ran the place until the business closed earlier this month when the current owners took a buyout from General Motors.

It was the kind of place where you could drop off your car and walk to the train station to get to work. It was also the kind of business that paid the community back by sponsoring such things as youth baseball teams and where if your grandpa bought a car there you might have, too.

And this week the owner of Irv's, the legendary discount clothing store, announced it would close the last of its several stores - its Prospect Heights headquarters - after almost 50 years in business.

It wasn't Irv's inconvenient location that killed the business suit stalwart, which drew people from all over the suburbs and even out of state. It certainly wasn't the rock bottom prices. It was business casual that did them in.

As for Lattof, there were simply too many Chevy dealers around.

Our suburbs are the worse for wear for losing them.

Such multigenerational businesses are calling cards for suburbs. Like Bob Chinn's in Wheeling. People from Naperville will traverse the suburbs just to go there for crab. And judging by the ever-present buses outside, there's no danger of that business floundering until the seas are empty.

But in a troubled economy, when people reel in their spending, small businesses that generally operate on low margins and sweat are imperiled.

The smile-and-a-handshake transactions that have been passed down through the generations are rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Replaced by, well, the types of businesses you see in every community.

Our suburbs are becoming too homogeneous. There are fewer things to distinguish them from one another. Fewer things to give us the personality we all prize.

You'll never again visit the family-run Santa's Village in East Dundee, which closed two years ago. Or dine at Floyd's in West Dundee, which once was the place to dine in the Fox Valley. It was demolished and is now a strip mall.

So visit Third Street in Geneva, Long Grove's quaint shops or Naperville's bustling downtown, just to name a few distinctive areas. These are the places that help define our towns.

Make sure they survive these challenging economic times.