Lake County Gazette

The Highland Park City Council met on Feb. 27 and discussed business incentive programs that are in place and other potential programs for the future.

City Manager Ghida Neukirch spoke highly about the programs, saying they were a great example of how Highland Park stands out. 

“We have 30,000 people in Highland Park and we have over 800 businesses that are spread throughout the community in eight different business districts,” Neukirch said. “One of the real pleasures that we have is on a regular basis when we talk to other communities in the Chicagoland area and even nationwide, Highland Park is looked at as a leader in so many areas, and business development is one of those areas.”

She invited Business Development Manager Carolyn Hersch to speak about the various programs, which included a sales tax rebate program and a facade grant program. She is the manager and primary point of contact with the businesses.

“As part of [Carolyn Hersch's] work in business retention, she's on a regular basis meeting with businesses, property owners, brokers, lenders, as well as other comparable real estate professionals,” explained Neukirch. “And then on the attraction side, there's a significant amount of work that's undertaken in terms of promoting available property and again, working with all of those parties to basically serve as a matchmaker, we kind of call it. So if there's a prospective business that she's going out and targeting or someone who contacts us that wants to locate in our community, she is identifying the available property and then putting the parties together because the city doesn't own these private properties. And so it's really up then to the property owner or their broker to proceed and kind of make a marriage, if you will, enter into a lease or real estate contract from there.”

Each year the city contributes about $15,000 to the programs. The city staff presented ideas for other business incentives for the city council to consider, as well. This included clean-up grants, industry specific grants, landscape grants and fee reductions. There were also suggestions for local employment perks, marketing grants for new businesses and an “eat local” program.

The council members expressed their desire to focus on existing small businesses and less on bringing new businesses in or supporting corporations. The also discussed expanding the existing small business facade grants and were looking forward to having a similar presentation this summer to discuss how the businesses were doing in at the busier time of year.