Comments from Tom_Allen

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Tom_Allen
Tom_Allen commented about DuPage Theater meets end on Aug 17, 2011 at 4:23 am

David – as a longtime village resident I can tell you ‘no…ain’t going to happen.’ The parking lot is what the demolitionists had in mind.

My wife and I got to talking about the wasteland that downtown Lombard is with so many empty storefronts and high churn rate. We took a drive through and had a look at places worth shopping. There are banners that advertise ‘forgivable loans’ from the Village in the vacant properties.

‘Forgivable Loans.’ Makes me sick.

Difference between downtown Lombard and downtown Glen Ellyn (where we shop and dine though we’re only five blocks from Park and St. Charles) is Lombard lacked foresight, pride and political will when it counted the most. Glen Ellyn…well what needs to be said about Glen Ellyn?

I’ve got my copy of “Footsteps on the Tall Grass Prairie” and have found a place in the book where the town council agrees in 1971 that unless changes were undertaken along St. Charles Road the downtown would die. It appears as though the author is correct, though I’ll have to do more research. It is interesting to this outsider that there are now names of people who rode the rubble down. I’d like to know the names of those that moved the village offices to Roosevelt Road in the late 70’s for they truly screwed downtown Lombard.

When one counts the dead, trapped-in-a-time-warp storefronts two blocks away from the anchor of the downtown that was the Dupage Theater as you leave for Glen Ellyn, Wheaton, or Elmhurst, one simply shakes one’s head in wonder about the people who created the events that killed the landmark theater and brought us the blight that is another parking lot.

They killed a centerpiece of our future downtown for political reasons and left us to park our cars on memories of the sublime beauty that was downtown Lombard and the visions of a thriving community center.