Maintaining community Medinah residents remind us that unincorporated areas are communities, too

Medinah is unlike most suburbs its size.

It has a commuter rail stop that terminates at Union Station in Chicago. There are a few schools and a modest park district. But, you won't find a village hall no matter how hard you look.

Medinah, sandwiched between Roselle, Bloomingdale and Itasca in northern DuPage County, has been unincorporated since it was first settled in 1833. Although it was casually referred to as Meacham's Grove after its first family, it didn't get its more official moniker until nearly a century later, after Chicago-area Shriners decided to build a world-class golf course there. The name of the course stuck for the land that neighbored it.

Medinah is quiet, rural and affluent. The homes are on acre-plus lots. And its residents like it that way.

So it's not surprising that they did not like it when Transwestern, a large real estate company and warehouse builder, started making plans to purchase the Medinah Terrace subdivision, whose 150 homes represent about a fifth of Medinah's housing stock, and tear them down to build an industrial park.

Transwestern had plans to have neighboring Itasca annex that 138 acres as well.

Some six months ago, Medinah residents, without the benefit of a municipal administration backing them, started to push back with petitions and a letter-writing campaign.

"The fact that we got Transwestern to pull out, Itasca has to understand that if they come after us with another developer, whether it's developer A, B or C, we're going to fight them again and we're going to fight back even harder," said Susie vander Nat, whose 150-year-old home - originally owned by the Meacham family - likely would have been targeted in a second phase of development.

The Itasca community development meeting, where Transwestern was to make a presentation on the project, was canceled after Transwestern notified the village it had given up on its plans. Itasca followed up with a statement that it has no plans to pursue commercial development of the area.

From the perspective of people who live within a municipality, this might look like another case of not-in-my-backyard. But in the case of people who live in Medinah, it's a case of not-my-backyard. And that's a big difference. We applaud their efforts to maintain their community.

Of course, this isn't the first time, Medinah residents have done something like this. When the Illinois Department of Transportation decided to widen Medinah Road, residents persuaded it to reduce the number of new lanes.

This whole episode reminds us that unincorporated areas can be communities unto themselves and that people without the benefit of local government representation can still work as one to protect their interests.