… who will?

For drivers heading westbound along Rollins Road from the Gurnee IL area, the “gateway” into Round Lake Beach is the sudden change from Forest Preserve and farm-land to the sprawl of shopping centers with Garden Fresh, Jewel-Osco, Subway, Pep Boys, etc.

Think “first impressions”; this is the first part of our village people see when coming from the interstate, traveling through at over 20,000/day.

Over the last decade or so that we’ve been watching,  for more years than not, we see during the winters something like this sitting in the drainage contour to the north of Rollins, on the Jewel side:

What impression does this leave on our visitors? What does it make us think about ourselves?

For the winter of 2012, it was a Pep Boys cart that sat there, silently welcoming visitors for over six continuous weeks. This one has been there for over a month… who has the “blue” carts in that plaza?

True, shopping carts can be tricky to round-up after windy, wintry days, and once they take a dive into the ditch… well, you can’t retrieve what you don’t see! Problem is, it can’t just be “out of sight, out of mind“ week after week after week. We’ve ALL seen it while driving on Rollins: store employees and owners, Village employees and officials, residents and visitors galore.

We suspect that, individually, you wouldn’t want company to visit in your home if it was messy; as is often done, there’s a flurry of quick clean-up when we know company is coming (don’t want them to think less of us for living in a mess).

Well, we have “company” in our village every day, and they see the way we keep our village “home”. What kind of message does that send about how we view and value the perceptions of Round Lake Beach? What effect can something like that have on investors and entrepreneurs looking for places to start a business? True, it’s  not a landfill, but it IS an indicator and it’s out there: it easily catches the eye, it’s there day after day, and it’s one of the first things you see driving into town.

Like a well-tended lawn or garden, pride of ownership shows through. Are we showing that we’re proud of RLB?