Kimball Hill closure a loss for all

After all the stories about home foreclosures, after all the stories about the mortgage crisis and the housing market collapse in America, perhaps it surprised few of us to read this week that Kimball Hill Homes will be shutting down next year.

It was not the first housing builder to do so and, sadly, it is not likely to be the last.

Still, this is one obituary we did not want to write.

The news that Kimball Hill Homes, the 9th largest in the metro area, will quit operating after 55 years should prompt every suburban resident to pause and ponder for a moment.

This is not just another story about a business felled by a horrible recession. Kimball Hill Homes did not simply build houses. Kimball Hill built homes. More than that, Kimball Hill created communities.

Certainly, Rolling Meadows would not exist were it not for Kimball Hill, the man and the company that bears his name.

Kimball Hill, the man, had built a few houses in Des Plaines and Oak Lawn in the early 1950s when he came across a deal for more than 500 acres just south of the Arlington Park racetrack. He jumped at the chance for the land and created what is Rolling Meadows today, not just the houses, but the streets and the street names too. In two years, Hill built more than 4,000 Rolling Meadows houses. In the decades since, the firm has built thousands upon thousands more.

Kimball Hill was succeeded by his son, David, in 1969 and the company expanded to build middle class and upscale homes in so many suburbs we could use the rest of this space listing them all. David Hill, who died from cancer earlier this year, expanded the company's reach to 12 different markets across America.

But the combination of that expansion and the colossal collapse of the housing market nationwide will mean an end to the company, the creation of houses and a loss of a way of earning a living for its employees.

Within six months, the company will finish the 500 homes it is currently constructing. The 120 deposits buyers have placed on homes will be returned, Daily Herald Staff Writer Deborah Donovan reported this week. And 260 inventory and model homes will be put up for sale. Some employees lost their jobs immediately, CEO Ken Love told Donovan. Others will stay on to close out the end of this era.

Kimball Hill did not just build houses. Under David Hill's leadership, it was a driving force in the building of the WINGS domestic violence shelter for women in Palatine. The Hill family helped build and guide the growth of Harper College. They planted the seed money for the Kimball Hill Deaf Institute. And the Hills were major contributors to the Northwest Community Hospital Foundation.

Kimball Hill was far more than a housing developer. On the day they shut the door at that business for the final time, they tear open a tiny rip in the social fabric that binds us all.