Did you know that the City of Naperville has a Senior Task Force? It’s not as well known as the Air Force or the senior class of your local high school, but it really does exist.
So what is a ‘Task Force’? According to the Naperville City website,
“Task forces are informal, privately organized and led by groups that provide valuable input to the City on a specific topic. While task forces are often encouraged by the City as helpful groups that can provide opinions and recommendations, they operate independently, are not officially sanctioned or directed by the City and are structured differently than the City’s formal boards and commissions.”
What is the ‘specific topic’ of the Senior Task Force?
The Senior Task Force, which was established at the direction of the 2014 Naperville City Council, is helping to address the unique needs of Naperville’s growing senior population.
It didn’t take the Senior Task Force long to make the recommendation in 2014 for city officials to focus on increasing the supply of affordable housing for older adults.
Here we are in 2022, eight years later, and what has been accomplished? In two words, ‘nothing much’. It’s not the fault of the ‘old-timers’ in the task force, they were ready to rock ‘n roll and push the process, the problem rests with city officials who couldn’t make things happen slower if they tried, and they’ve tried. How many members of the original Senior Task Force are no longer with us? Probably at least a few. How many additional will have ‘checked out’ when something finally will come to fruition; probably a good number more.
Two companies were showing interest in the project, but one (Chicago-based Mercy Housing Lakefront) withdrew their interest; maybe they grew tired of wasting time. That leaves one company remaining, Gorman and Company based in Wisconsin to see if they can outlast Naperville city officials.
As of now, the time line shows that in a perfect world, construction could begin during the middle of 2024, and tenant leasing could happen in 2026. That’s just a mere 12 years, but then again, that’s in a perfect world.
