Gloria Tobolski is torn regarding a new parking lot planned by the village of McCook.
On one hand, she likes the idea of extra parking being available in her block, the 5000 block of Glencoe Avenue, where parking is tight.
For example, one tenant of an apartment building across the street from her home has three vehicles, she said.
On the other hand, demolishing a house to make room for a 15-space parking lot tugs at her heartstrings.
The brick house at the south end of Glencoe at Joliet Road was built about 100 years ago by her grandparents.
Tobolski fondly recalls her grandparents keeping “chickens, cows, ducks, horses” on the farm.
“There was nothing else here,” she said.
“This was a one-horse town. … There was no traffic here. There was a bar on the corner that had a horse. You could ride (the horse) up to Ogden Avenue and back,” she said.
Tobolski, 81, lives two doors north of her grandparents’ old home.
In February, the village board unanimously approved purchasing the house for $290,000.
“Ask if they want to buy my apartment building (in the same block). My mother left it to me and I haven’t made a dime on it,” Tobolski said with a laugh.
The old house will soon be torn down and replaced with a parking lot with at least 15 spaces, Mayor Terrance Carr said.
Demolition is expected to cost $175,000. The village will install a fence, light and security cameras. The price tag for the lot has not been determined.
“It’s in a residential area, so it needs to look top notch. (We) won’t cut any corners,” Carr texted.
Motorists who frequent the area are probably familiar with the brick house.
It stands north of Joliet Road and is a stone’s throw east of First Avenue, which towers over it. The ramp from northbound First Avenue exits just south of the house onto Joliet Road.
Tobolski said her daughter-in-law lives in the house beside the house that will be torn down.
“So, she would live next to a parking lot. If the lights are not too bright, I guess it’d be okay. Who wants to go to bed and have those lights burning in your eyes all night?” Tobolski said.
She concedes that parking “is bad here. … We’ve got cars that sit (on the street) all week. Parking is bad on Glencoe.”
Tobolski, whose late son Jeff was mayor of McCook, is pleased the village recently posted signs limiting parking to the west side of Glencoe.
Carr said with parking on one side “it will be easier to get snowplows down the street. It’s a narrow road.”
Tobolski is encouraged that the lot will be for residents “as long as cars don’t sit there for weeks and weeks,” she said.
“I guess it will be good,” Tobolski said. “Come back and talk to us after the parking lot’s been here a year.”
Residents “will love it,” Carr said.