Dempster Street merchants hold 1st meeting

• Reprints

Shalom Klein (from left), Al Curtis and David Putrus address a small group Jan. 10 at the new First Bank & Trust branch on Dempster Street. It was the first meeting of the newly-formed Dempster Street Merchants Association. | Mike Isaacs~Sun-Times Media

Article Extras

Updated: February 20, 2012 8:14AM

About three miles or so separates one end of Dempster Street from the other in Skokie, but the merchants who open shop there every day just became closer than any mere map could indicate.

The newly-formed Dempster Street Merchants Association is predicated on the idea that merchants on one of Skokie’s busiest streets have strong mutual interests — the main one being the creation of a thriving commercial district that too often has been plagued by empty shops and deteriorating buildings.

“It’s shocking that something like this hasn’t been created in the past,” said Shalom Klein, a networking guru in the region who also works with his father in a Dempster Street business.

“We all have the same challenges that face us up and down Dempster,” he said. “When there’s traffic at one end of Dempster, everybody else suffers. We want cars though. We want a lot of cars.”

Al Curtis, who helped organize the association’s first meeting Jan. 10 at the new First Bank & Trust branch on Dempster, emphasized that the group is not political.

“This is an idea to get people on Dempster Street and people who want to do business on Dempster Street to know each other,” he said.

But more than just Dempster Street merchants turned out to the first meeting, reflecting support for the association well beyond the street’s commercial interests.

Two village trustees, Michael Lorge and Pramod Shah, Police Chief Tony Scarpelli, Plan Commission Chairman Paul Luke and Skokie Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Howard Meyer were all in attendance.

“The trustees of the village are more than interested in being responsive to the needs of the businesses in this community and particular on Dempster Street,” Lorge told the small group. “Some of us are up and down and purchasing all the time on Dempster.”

Also in attendance was State Rep. Daniel Biss, D-17th, who recently set up an office on Dempster in his campaign to win a state senate seat. This is the third election for Biss and the third time he has set up headquarters at a different location on Dempster.

“Every place I’ve been there’s been a nucleus of what could be a real thriving business community,” Biss said. “And yet in every instance there are vacancies and there’s clearly opportunities that aren’t being taken advantage of.”

The village has recently paid close attention to Dempster Street — especially the west end. From creating a new tax increment finance zone to helping plan for a new Oberweis ice cream parlor to be built at the location of the village’s longest eminent domain case in history to purchasing several properties and razing dilapidated shopping centers on them, the village has left little ambiguity about its intention to revitalize the area.

The Dempster Street Merchants Association, which is set to meet four times a year and become a non-profit, stresses that its organization is about all of commercial Dempster Street and not just the west side.

Those behind the new association include David Putrus, assistant vice president of First Bank & Trust and manager of Skokie’s Skokie Boulevard branch; Moshe Klein of Moshe Klein Associates, LTD; and David Jacobson of Chicago Jewish Funerals.

“It makes sense to come together as a networking group‚“ said Putrus. “These are difficult times and we have shared interests.”

The Dempster Street Merchants Association could serve several roles including being a liaison to new businesses, backing initiatives to draw business and promoting businesses on the busy street. There are no definitive plans right now, organizers said — just a desire to move forward together.

The association requires no membership fee and reflects the first of its kind in Skokie not dedicated to downtown. Putrus even compared its development to the successful Independent Merchants of Downtown Skokie.

Moshe Klein said he is proud of being a Dempster Street merchant and posed the idea of displaying a certificate in commercial windows advertising the new group.

Klein, whose business is bookkeeping and accounting, said the association is a long time coming, noting there have been vacancies and “long-term deterioration” on the street.

“I think what the village is doing to address this is wonderful, but more is needed,” he said. “And we’re really part of that ‘more.’”

The village did not participate in the creation of the association, but the Dempster Street Merchants Association welcomes its support.

“We want the village to be involved, but we want them to be involved in response to the real and very specific needs of the Dempster merchants,” Klein said. “Not the perceived needs. I think there’s a big difference.”

To organizers, Dempster became neglected because of a misguided belief that the economy would turn around more quickly than it has.

But the merchants continue to understand they remain in the middle of mini-recession, Klein said.

The association in the end, he said, will be about “what Dempster can be” and how merchants can come together to make it happen.