Education and Work Center in Hanover Park celebrates a decade of service to community
The innovative Education and Work Center in Hanover Park, a collaborative effort among local governments and the state, will celebrate its 10th anniversary with a special event Thursday afternoon.
Running from noon to 4:30 p.m. with the program itself starting at 3:30 p.m., the commemoration will include light snacks and beverages at the center at 6704 Barrington Road in the restored and newly resold Hanover Square Shopping Center.
The partnership of Elgin Community College, Harper College, and the village of Hanover Park, along with critical support from the state of Illinois, has helped build the English and work skills of community residents as well as providing them job-search assistance.
“It’s a marvelous collaboration,” Hanover Park Mayor Rod Craig said. “We addressed it as a welcoming center. Hanover Park is a welcoming community. Many first-generation families are now speaking English because of this initiative. We want them to be successful and learn the language. Our primary language in this country is English. If you want them to be assimilated, that’s a key component.”
While the two colleges along with Illinois workNet and the Chicago Cook Workforce Partnership are now providing much of the services, it fell to Craig and the village to get the ball rolling over a decade ago on the location and access to public transportation.
“We checked a lot of shopping centers, and that was like pulling teeth,” Craig said.
Hanover Square was in horrible shape at the time. But Craig said it was the landlord’s being angered by the specific suggestion of renovating space for the proposed Education and Work Center that led to his counterproposal that the village buy the entire property and fix it up itself.
And so it did. The village used $2.8 million in tax increment financing (TIF) funds to acquire the more than 9-acre property in December 2011 and begin renovating it. The project was considered complete with the $7.25 million sale last January to Wayne-based SIAINC LLC.
Craig considers the EWC an asset in attracting other new tenants to the rebuilding shopping center, particularly for the evening flow of students who could be customers.
But he darkly laughs at the memory that the EWC got its act together quicker than the building repairs could.
“It was a rough start,” Craig said. “On the day we opened, the roof leaked.”
He also negotiated Hanover Park into a Pace bus route that already included Elgin, Streamwood, Hoffman Estates and Schaumburg. His village’s initial annual cost was $24,000 per year, but within a year of the EWC opening the ridership itself was covering it.
“That was a real plus,” he said.
Senior Director Monika Gadek-Stephan said the number of students tended to gravitate around the low 600s before the pandemic, then dipped down into the 400s even as dependence on remote learning spread the geographical reach of the classes.
But the numbers reached a record high of 653 in fiscal year 2023, which was then broken with 762 in 2024. A large influx of Venezuelan immigrants is seen as the reason for the rise. And word of mouth continues to be a major generator of new clients.
“We can see they’re telling other people about us,” Gadek-Stephan said.
A native of Poland, Gadek-Stephan said she wishes she had had access to something like the EWC when she arrived in the U.S. But her experiences help those who are there now, she believes.
“I have the empathy and the knowledge of what it’s truly like to be an immigrant,” she said.
Avis Proctor, president of Harper College, said the collaboration with ECC made sense as Hanover Park is right where their jurisdictions converge. She believes the mission of the EWC has evolved over time, and the 10th anniversary is the perfect time to ask where it can go next.
“We’re all seeing growth in our adult education populations,” Proctor said of higher education in the region. “Our mission is to transform lives. This is just one example of the commitment we have.”
She and Craig give much credit to state Rep. Fred Crespo of Hoffman Estates for the role Illinois has played in the realization of such an innovative idea.
“Without Fred, it wouldn’t have happened,” Craig says simply. “He’s been marvelous.”
Crespo could not be immediately reached for comment, but is a scheduled speaker at Thursday’s anniversary event. Others include Craig, Proctor, Gadek-Stephan and Interim ECC President Peggy Heinrich.
For more information about the center and to RSVP for the celebration, visit elgin.edu/ewc.