The New West Dempster Business Alliance
An upstart group of merchants looks to revive Skokie's Dempster Street as a major destination for businesses and local consumers.
Perhaps some of it is lore, perhaps some of it is truth, but Dempster Street in Skokie was once thought of as a bustling area filled with thriving businesses. That isn’t the case so much anymore, but a group of local business owners believe a Dempster Street renaissance is possible and are working toward that goal. With representatives of the local business community on hand as well as several village officials, the Dempster Street Merchants Association held its first meeting recently with an overall goal of injecting life into the east-west thoroughfare that is now tattooed with many empty storefronts. David Putrus, an assistant vice president at First Bank & Trust, which recently opened its own location on Dempster, started the …
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Earl Weiss
2:53 pm on Thursday, January 26, 2012
The first thing they need to do is convince Skokie to throw some money at existing businesses (which should be no problem since they blew over a million $ bringing in Oberweiss never to be recouped) and for the most part existing businesses only got a kick in the teeth from Skokie thru eminent domain proceedings and extra taxes for beautification which had no direct benefit. more ›