Suburb Sees the Light in Rail

  • The town of Elburn, IL is working to preserve their small town feel in the face of sprawling development headed their way. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

Rural towns on the edge of big cities often see encroaching suburban development as a threat to their way of life. One small town is feeling those pressures too. And it’s taking a page from its past to fight them. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee has this report:

Transcript

Rural towns on the edge of big cities often see encroaching
suburban development as a threat to their way of life. One small town
is feeling those pressures too. And it’s taking a page from its past
to fight them. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee
has this report:


Eric Gustaffson is a young guy who works at his family’s drug store. He says he plans to stick around because he likes his small town – Elburn, Illinois – just as it is. It’s still got a working grain elevator and animal feed stores. It also has a real town center, a strip of shops that people can walk to.


But like a lot of his neighbors, Eric’s bothered by some of the sprawling subdivisions that are popping up nearby. He doesn’t want to see that that kind of development come to Elburn. He says it would become a place where neighbors live too far apart and everyone has to drive to get anywhere. He does have hope, though.


“I really think that the plan that Elburn has set in place will work a lot better and will control how things grow a little bit more instead of just things from popping up in random places.”


So, what’s the plan? Well, it turns out Elburn’s looking to its past for help. Residents used to catch passenger trains here for day trips to Chicago. The passenger service died out decades ago, but now Elburn’s bringing in a new train station. It will be part of the region’s Metra commuter rail system.


By next year, commuters will be able to avoid the congested roads that lead to Chicago, but the town also wants the station to be the center of a new neighborhood, a cluster of new shops, smaller homes, and even apartments.


The idea’s to get people to walk to stores and the train instead of driving to them, all of which is very different from what’s happening in nearby subdivisions. Those are pretty much isolated tracts of big houses and little else.


There is some danger in Elburn’s plan, though. The proposed development could double the population, and the train station will attract extra car traffic to its parking lot. During our drive to the construction site, I ask the mayor, Jim Willey, whether this plan might kill the town while trying to save it.


“I get the impression sometimes people wish that we had some secret sauce we could spray on the town and keep it just the way it is. It’s sad, but you can’t do that and change happens, and we have to deal with it.”


(Sound of heavy machinery)


At the site, construction machines pack down a couple of acres of dirt. It took a decade, a lot of political will, and a hundred and forty million dollars to start the project. But Jim says that was the easy part.


It will be harder to resist the temptation to stray from the plan, and build only big, single family homes here. He says a compact mix of stores and housing will be good for the region, not just Elburn. If there’s enough housing here, maybe there’ll be less pressure to build houses on the nearby farms.


“You can’t go anywhere in the world and find finer farmland than where we’re at right now. So the least that we can do is, when we’re going to convert this to housing, is let’s think about what we’re doing, let’s try to make some intelligent decisions.”


There are towns that look like Elburn’s vision of the future. Last century, commuter towns with compact development sprung up along the country’s commuter rail lines. But they all got their start in the days before interstate highways and long car commutes. So, is it possible to mimic those towns now, in the post-automobile age?


Well, I put that question to Dave Schulz. He’s with the Infrastructure Technology Institute, a federally-funded transportation research group. He says it’s hard to keep projects like Elburn’s on track; homes are clustered close to shops, what planners call high-density. He cites Glenview, another Illinois town with a commuter rail station.


“Basically, a number of members of the Glenview board who were voted out of office for approving a townhome development that was judged, apparently, by voters to be too high density near the train station. I think we have a situation where people in the suburbs fear density.”


Schulz says it’s hard to change that attitude. But to fend off the sprawl of suburban development, towns like Elburn need to stay the course. Otherwise…


“If all you’re gonna do is build a bunch of stations in the middle of the cornfields with giant parking lots to allow people to drive to the station from wherever they choose to live, I think a fairly strong argument can be made that you’re not fighting sprawl, but you’re in fact facilitating sprawl.”


Dave Schulz says places like Elburn could be onto something. Maybe its plan for compact development will attract people looking for something different from typical suburban homes. If Elburn can keep its small-town feel, maybe newcomers won’t mind giving up their spacious yards and extra cars.


For the GLRC, I’m Shawn Allee.

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How Long Do You Keep a Polluting Heap?

  • Motor oil dripping from cars can add up and end up contaminating waterways and sediments. (Photo by Brandon Blinkenberg)

Industries and companies get labeled as
“polluters.” But what do you do when you find out you’re a pretty big polluter yourself… and you find out it’s going to cost you a lot of money to fix the
problem? As part of the series, “Your Choice; Your
Planet,” the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca
Williams finds herself in that dilemma:

Transcript

Industries and companies get labeled as “polluters.” But what do you do when you find out you’re a pretty big polluter yourself… and you find out it’s going to cost you a lot of money to fix the problem? As part of the series, “Your Choice; Your Planet,” the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams finds herself in that dilemma:


(sound of car starting)


This is my ‘89 Toyota Camry. It has 188,000 miles on it. Pieces of
plastic trim fly off on the highway, and I have to climb in from the
backseat when my door gets frozen in the winter. But I got it for free, I get good gas mileage, and my insurance is cheap. But now, it’s leaking oil – lots of oil. I knew it was bad when I started
pouring in a quart of oil every other week.


I thought I’d better take it in to the shop.


(sound of car shop)


My mechanic, Walt Hayes, didn’t exactly have good news for me.


“You know, you’re probably leaking about 80% of that, just from experience, I’d say
you’re burning 20% and leaking 80%.”


Walt says the rear main seal is leaking, and the oil’s just dripping
straight to the ground. Walt tells me the seal costs 25 dollars, but he’d
have to take the transmission out to get to the seal. That means I’d be
paying him 650 dollars.


650 bucks to fix an oil leak, when no one would steal my car’s radio. There’s no way. Obviously, it’s cheaper to spend two dollars on each quart of oil, than to fix the seal.


“Right – what else is going to break, you know? You might fix the rear main
seal, and your transmission might go out next week or something. Your car,
because of its age, is on the edge all the time. So to invest in a 25 dollar seal, spending a lot of money for labor, almost doesn’t make sense on an
older car.”


That’s my mechanic telling me not to fix my car. In fact, he says he’s seen
plenty of people driving even older Toyotas, and he says my engine will
probably hold out a while longer. But now I can’t stop thinking about the
quarts of oil I’m slowly dripping all over town.


I need someone to tell me: is my one leaky car really all that bad? Ralph
Reznick works with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. He
spends his time trying to get polluters to change their behavior.


“That’s a lot for an old car. If you were the only car in the parking lot,
that wouldn’t be very much. But the fact is, there’s a lot of cars just
like yours that are doing the same thing.”


Reznick says the oil and antifreeze and other things that leak from and fall
off cars like mine add up.


“The accumulative impact of your car and other cars, by hitting the
pavement, and washing off the pavement into the waterways, is a very large
impact. It’s one of the largest sources of pollution we’re dealing with
today.”


Reznick says even just a quart of oil can pollute thousands of gallons of
water. And he says toxins in oil can build up in sediment at the bottom of
rivers and lakes. That can be bad news for aquatic animals and plants.
There’s no question – he wants me to fix the leak.


But I am NOT pouring 650 bucks into this car when the only thing it has going
for it is that it’s saving me money. So I can either keep driving it, and
feel pretty guilty, or I can scrap it and get a new car.


But it does take a lot of steel and plastic and aluminum to make a new car.
Maybe I’m doing something right for the environment by driving a car that’s
already got that stuff invested in it.


I went to the Center for Sustainable Systems at the University of Michigan
and talked to Greg Keoleian. He’s done studies on how many years it makes
sense to keep a car. He says if you look at personal costs, and the energy
that goes into a making a midsize car, it makes sense to hang onto it for a
long time… like 16 years.


No problem there – I finally did something right!


Well, sort of.


“In your case, from an emissions point of view, you should definitely
replace your vehicle. It turns out that a small fraction of vehicles are
really contributing to a lot of the local air pollution. Older vehicles
tend to be more polluting, and you would definitely benefit the environment
by retiring your vehicle.”


Keoleian says if I get a newer car, it won’t be leaking oil, and it won’t
putting out nearly as much nitrogen oxide and other chemicals that lead to
smog. Oh yeah, he also says I really need to start looking today.


And so doing the right thing for the environment is going to cost me money.
There’s no way around that. The more I think about my rusty old car, the
more I notice all the OTHER old heaps on the road. Maybe all of you are a
bit like me, hoping to make it through just one more winter without car
payments.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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If You Build It… Will They Really Come?

  • Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati, OH just before detonation in 2002. The 32 year-old stadium was demolished to make way for a new stadium paid for by a sales tax. (Photo by Eric Andrews)

In cities across the nation, taxpayers are finding themselves facing the same dilemma: cough up big bucks for a new sports stadium… or else. Right now it’s happening in Washington, D.C. as the capital city tries to lure a baseball team. It’s happening in New York where the city’s deciding whether to spend 600 million dollars on a new home for the Jets in Manhattan. The debate is over what the taxpayers get. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Richard Paul takes a look at whether sports stadiums really can hit a homerun for taxpayers:

Transcript

In cities across the nation, taxpayers are finding themselves facing the same dilemma:
cough up big bucks for a new sports stadium… or else. Right now it’s happening in
Washington, D.C. as the capital city tries to lure a baseball team. It’s happening in New
York where the city’s deciding whether to spend 600 million dollars on a new home for
the Jets in Manhattan. The debate is over what the taxpayers get. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Richard Paul takes a look at whether sports stadiums really can hit a
homerun for taxpayers:


It’s sort of funny when you think about it. The most hackneyed rationale you can think of
for building a ballpark is… it turns out… actually the primary motivation when cities sit
down to figure out whether to shell out for a stadium. You know what I’m talking
about…


(MOVIE CLIP – “FIELD OF DREAMS”: “If you build it they will come…”)


Just like in “Field of Dreams.” Put in a stadium. People will show up, see the game, eat
in the neighborhood, shop there, stay overnight in hotels, pay taxes on everything and
we’ll clean up!


(MOVIE CLIP – “FIELD OF DREAMS”: “They’ll pass over the money without even
thinking about it…”)


Here’s the thing though… it doesn’t work.


“In the vast majority of cases there was very little or no effect whatsoever on the local
economy.”


That’s economist Ron Utt. He’s talking about a study that looked at 48 different cities
that built stadiums from 1958 to 1989. Not only didn’t they improve things, he says in
some cases it even got worse.


“If you’re spending 250 million or 750 million or a billion dollars on something, that
means a whole bunch of other things that you’re not doing. Look at Veterans Stadium
and the Spectrum in South Philadelphia or the new state-of-the art Gateway Center in
Cleveland. The sponsors admitted that that created only half of the jobs that were
promised.”


But what about those numbers showing that stadiums bring the state money – all that
sales tax on tickets and hot dogs? Economists will tell you to look at it this way: If I
spend $100 taking my wife to a nice dinner in Napa Valley…


(sound of wine glasses clinking)


Or we spend $100 watching the Giants at Pac Bell Park…


(sound of ballpark and organ music)


…I’ve still only spent $100. The hundred dollars spent at the ballpark is not new money.
I just spent it one place instead of another.


In Washington right now, fans have been told they can keep the Washington Nationals, if
Major League Baseball gets a new stadium that the fans pay for. Washington is a place
was more professional activists, more advanced degrees and more lawyers than it has
restaurants, traffic lights or gas stations. And as a result, it’s practically impossible to get
anything big built. But the mayor’s trying. He wants the city to build a new stadium in
really awful part of town and use baseball as the lever to bring in economic activity. The
reaction so far? Turn on the local TV news…


NEWS REPORT – NEWS – CHANNEL 8
ANCHOR: “Baseball’s return to the District still isn’t sitting well with some folks. One
major issue is the proposal for a new stadium.”


ANGRY MAN GIVING A SPEECH: “Tell this mayor that his priorities are out of
order.”


Turns out that guy’s in the majority. A survey by The Washington Post shows
69% of the people in Washington don’t want city funds spent on a new baseball stadium.
We Americans weren’t always like this.


MOVIE CLIP – SAN FRANCISCO WORLD’S FAIR
ANNOUNCER: “You will want to see the Golden Gate international exposition again
and again in the time you have left to you…”


Today politicians need to couch this kind of spending in terms of economic development
because no one will support tax dollars for entertainment. But there was a time in
America when people were willing to squander multiple millions in public money for the
sake of a good time.


MOVIE CLIP – SAN FRANCISCO WORLD’S FAIR
ANNOUNCER: “Remember: Treasure Island – the world fair of the West closes forever
on September 29th.”


In 1939, in New York and San Francisco, and then again in New York in 1964. they
spent MILLIONS. And the purpose was never really clear. Here’s Robert Moses… the
man who made New York City what it is today… on the 1964 Fair.


REPORTER: “What is the overall purpose of the new Fair?”


MOSES: “Well, the overall stated purpose is education for brotherhood and brotherhood
through education.”


MOVIE CLIP – NEW YORK WORLD’S FAIR
ANNOUNCER: “Everyone is coming to the New York World’s Fair. Coming from the
four corners of the earth. And Five Corners, Idaho.”


Maybe those were simpler times. When people were a lot more willing to let rich men in
charge tell them what was right and wrong. Today, a politician looking to build himself a
monument is going to have to convince people it’s for their own good – and economic
development is the most popular selling point. Looking around these days – more often
than not – it seems voters are willing to rely on a quick fix. Taken together, that’s a
recipe for this kind of thing continuing. After all, when you’re a politician building a
legacy for yourself, a sports stadium is a lot sexier than filling pot holes or fixing school
roofs.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Richard Paul.

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Bike Co-Op Pedals Self Sufficiency

  • A volunteer at re-Cycles looks for a replacement. Volunteers teach bike repair to amateurs and novices. Their goal is to get people out of their cars and onto their bikes. Photo by Lisa Routhier.

When it comes to bicycles, many of us are weekend warriors. The thought of riding a bike to work is intimidating – especially given the chance it might break down. Now, some cycling advocates are helping ordinary people become amateur bike mechanics. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly visited a community-run repair shop and has this report:

Transcript

When it comes to bicycles, many of us are weekend warriors. The thought of riding a
bike to work is intimidating – especially given the chance it might break down. Now,
some cycling advocates are helping ordinary people become amateur bike mechanics.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly visited a community-run repair
shop and has this report:


(ambient sound in shop)


It’s the perfect day to work on your bike.
Rainy and cold. But the forecast says warmer weather is ahead.


And that’s why people and bikes are packed into a so-called
bicycle cooperative based in Ottawa, Canada. It’s called Recycles.
And it’s a bike repair shop that’s open to everyone.


Its walls are lined with cookie tins filled with greasy bicycle
parts. Fenders and inner tubes hang from the ceiling.


For just a few bucks an hour, you can get a bike stand, access to
tools and advice from mechanics.


The shop is run by ten volunteers who keep it open two nights a
week and on Sundays.


Mark Rehder is the coop’s director. He’s a firm believer that anyone can fix a bike.


“If they’re a complete novice, we’ll start. We’ll sort of,
‘here.’ We’ll do it or show them and hand them the screwdriver or
the wrench and say ‘you keep doing that and when you get that part
off, let me know.’ And then so the head mechanic will move on to
someone else and the person, ‘okay, I’ve got the thingamajig off’
and we’re ‘okay, now you have to clean that out’ and just step by
step…guide them through the thing.”


The coop was started seven years ago by a group of dedicated
cyclists. Lloyd Deane is one of the coop’s founders. He says their
mission is simple – to get people out of their cars.


“There is an alternative out there and it’s quiet, it’s
healthy, it’s cheap, it’s uncomplicated and you can actually fix
it yourself and we’re a living testament that people with no
mechanical skills whatsoever can come in here and fix their own
transportation.”


(pedals turning)


Volunteer mechanic Rob Galdins focuses intently on the bicycle
wheel spinning in front of him. He works on one side of the bike
as a client tightens nuts on the other.


“We’re putting on some new brake pads and we’re just sort of
centering the brakes so that they hit the rim squarely…
And yeah, tighten that nut. There’s already a nut there. Okay….”


Nearby, volunteer Jennifer Niece is making the wheel true on her
own bike. She says this experience has changed the way she uses
her bicycle.


“I do a lot of touring and I wasn’t really able to do that by
myself until I started volunteering here because if I got a flat
tire or if my brakes busted or something out on the road, I
wouldn’t have been able to fix it. So it’s really valuable for me
to learn that.”


When the volunteers aren’t helping other people, they’re refurbishing
used bikes. They sell them to keep the operation going. But the
group also receives some outside support.


Most of their tools and parts are supplied by the Mountain
Equipment Co-op, a Canadian nonprofit that sells outdoor gear.
Mark Vancoy is the social and environmental coordinator at the
Ottawa store. He says they support Recycles because it fills a void in the
community.


“If you were to go to a bike shop, a lot of times … the
shop rate is, for most people, sort of out of range for them. So this
really empowers people to be able to one, afford to have a bike
and two, to keep them up in working order.”


The bicycle co-op is probably one of the smallest volunteer
organizations in Ottawa. It has a tiny budget, no rules, and virtually no
hierarchy. But the leader of this band of volunteers, Mark Rehder, is
convinced it’s an ideal way to change society.


“It’s great to go up on parliament hill and wave the signs,
‘down with Bush’ or whatever, but at a local level is where change
is most effective. It’s just little groups like us, doing little
things and connecting with the other little groups and maybe every
now and then sort of pulling out a pillar that was propping up
something society didn’t need anyways.”


(sound of bike shop)


Rehder says sometimes they’ll talk about politics. Mostly, they’re focused on
flat tires and broken chains. But many of them share the same dream –
they look forward to a day when cyclists will have the roads to themselves.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly.

Trash Transformed Into Trendy Fashion

  • This purse, made out of an old license plate and recycled motorcycle hubcabs, was created by Pittsburgh-based company Littlearth. Photo courtesy of Littlearth.

It’s estimated that Americans will spend about 295 billion dollars during the holiday season. Sooner or later, most of what we buy will end up in the garbage – filling the already crowded landfills. But one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. And as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports, entrepreneurs are taking our garbage and turning it into trendy products:

Transcript

It’s estimated that Americans will spend about 295 billion dollars during the holiday season.
Sooner or later, most of what we buy will end up in the garbage – filling the already crowded
landfills. But one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. And as the Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports, entrepreneurs are taking our garbage and turning it into trendy
products:


(music playing)


At the Rec Room in St. Louis, Missouri, Angela Bergman is eyeing the store’s best-selling
product, a belt decorated with vintage bottle caps.


“It’s different, like everyone’s got the same old thing and that’s something not too many people
have.”


It’s called the soda cap belt and it was created by the Pittsburgh-based company called Littlearth.
The belt is made out of recycled rubber and the buckle is actually from the seat belt of a car.


Almost all of Littlearth’s products are made from recycled materials.


But Rec Room manager, Ed Sievers, says first and foremost, customers go for the style.


“Not the recycled, that’s certainly far secondary. It’s the fashion. They’re attracted to because of the
coolness and the fashion, basically.”


That’s exactly what Littlearth founder, Ava DeMarco, is striving for. She and her partner, Rob
Brandegee, started the company almost 10 years ago in the basement of their home.


Most entrepreneurs begin with an idea for a product. But Ava says they were inspired by
curbside shopping expeditions.


“We got old inner tubes and just went out and scrounged around for hub caps and license plates
and we’d bring all these found objects into our house and figure out how we could make them
into products with the equipment we had.”


Those strange materials have led to some pretty unusual items. For instance, there are purses
made out of old license plates. First, the plates are shaped into a cylinder. Then they’re closed
with a clasp. And plugged on either end with motorcycle hubcaps. They also make hair brushes
out of bicycle handlebars – the kind with tassels hanging off the end.


These days, the company sells its products in more than 2,000 stores across the U.S.


But no matter how much they grow, Ava says they’ll always start with a cool piece of trash.


“I like the whole idea of taking things out of the waste stream and making stuff that isn’t just like, ‘Oh, you made that at home,’ but it takes it beyond that and it’s just an amazing, unique, one of a
kind thing that’s really beautiful.”



“This clock was a chrome lampshade. That’s the cage of a fan. This is a clock made out of an old
lawnmower.”


Patti Smythe gives a tour of her store, The Garbage Palace in Toronto. She calls herself a dumpster diver. And while she runs a smaller business than Littlearth, her mission is the same – to
transform trash into treasure.


“These are our barbie angels and in the summer they’re called glamour barbies, so with old barbie dolls, we transform them into treetops. You put them on top of your Christmas tree. So that’s
what happens when Barbie dies. She becomes an angel.”


Smythe’s store is packed floor to ceiling with works of garbage art. There are the lamps made out
of old kettles and baking pans. Vinyl records are melted into vases. And broken chairs are
turned into tables. One has a giant film canister on top. Another is covered with a mosaic made
from broken plates. And, as a last resort, just about anything can be turned into a clock – the blade of a saw, a shoe tree or even a vintage blender.


Smythe says it’s not just about making money, it’s about inspiring others to do the same.


“I’d like to change people’s views. It isn’t garbage. We’re such a wasteful society: ‘Ugh, throw it out, we’ll get a new one,’ that kind of attitude. I’m trying to change that. It’s like, don’t throw it
out, make it into something else, you know?”


Smythe says she redirects literally tons of post-consumer waste every year. She keeps about a
quarter of what she finds and donates the rest to teachers to use in their art classes. At Littlearth,
Ava DeMarco recycles about 40 tons of rubber and 60 thousand license plates each year. Both
women say they love the thrill of discovering quirky items on the sidewalk. And they hope to
convince people to take a second look at their garbage and appreciate its hidden potential.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly.

Keeping the Holidays Simple

The holiday season is a time of giving. It’s also a time of rushing,
shopping, and waste. But the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester
Graham reports that some people are trying to keep the holidays more
simple: