Oak Lawn's Small Businesses Still Feeling Recession Pains

If the recession is over, someone forgot to send a memo to the business owners on 95th Street and Cicero Avenue.

For some Oak Lawn business owners, the second decade of the 21st century feels a lot like the 1930s, when the Great Depression was in full swing. Delaying hiring, capital improvements, and expanding products and services, local businesses have fought hard the past three years just to keep their doors open.

“Absolutely not, no way,” says George Rock, co-owner of when asked if he felt like the recession was over. “Anybody who says that is kidding you. I still see empty storefronts. I have not seen any significant increases in businesses at all.”

What little profit gains they’ve made—if any—have gone toward rent and taxes, rather than being reinvested in their businesses and creating new jobs. earlier this year forced many businesses to trim back a little more, but what’s really killing them are the property taxes.

“We have an arrangement (with the landlord) to pay last year’s increased property tax bill,” Rock said. “Our share went up an additional net amount of $6,000 last year. It was such an extreme that they put us on an installment plan.”

Every Good Gift, , has a three-year lease that’s set to expire in October. Rock and his wife, Judy, expect this year’s property tax bill to be piled on to last year’s. Although their hearts are in Oak Lawn, they don’t know if they’ll be able to stay at their current location at 10336 S. Cicero.

“There are others in far worse shape than we are,” Rock said. “Someone else in our mall finally cashed out. Their net share of the property tax bill was $9,000. They just gave up.”

At , at 10806 S. Cicero, Eddie Memishi says it’s costly to change menu prices to keep up with increasing taxes.

“We’re stuck with our prices,” Memishi said. “Vendors’ prices, food supplies, fuel—it’s all going up. We can’t keep printing new menus by constantly changing prices to keep up. The prices are written in stone. We’d have to change our price lines manually, and you can’t leave a menu priceless.”

Memishi says some days are better than others at the restaurant, which tries to support as many local charities and causes as it can. Last Christmas, Memishi and his partner, Sandi Dagangi, to families and seniors hit hard by the recession.

“The recession is definitely not over,” Memishi said. “It’s slowly turning around, but the economy has a long way to go to recover.”

Laurie Harrington, co-owner of , at 4720 W. 95th St., is paying $700 more a month to pay for parking lot maintenance, water and trash collection, on top of the $2,400 monthly rent. Almost half of the storefronts in the mall where the spa is located are empty.

“To keep the business open and running in this economy, I can’t pass that increase on to the customer,” Harrington said. “Over the past several years, services have gone up a dollar or two, but we’ve kept the costs of most other services in check.”

Across 95th Street at the , Rita Olsen said they’ve lowered the price for a room at the family-owned motel that her husband, Bob’s, grandfather started in 1954, to remain competitive with other motels in Oak Lawn.

“We’re bringing in less money and taxes are getting higher,” Olsen said. “Now we don’t have money to reinvest in the business and the community.”

While some relief has come in the form of federal bills designed to make it easier for small businesses to obtain loans, Memishi thinks it’s the “big guys” who are getting all the breaks, while the “small guys” are left standing in the cold.

“They need to give small-business people a lot more leeway,” Memishi said. “It’s the mom-and-pop stores that keep America going. We should not be shouldering the burden of big corporations. They need to give us small guys some breaks.”

Olsen said the lack of stimulus spending on small, family-owned businesses means that money can’t be kept local.

“There’s got to be some sort of relief for us,” Olsen lamented. “We need more jobs in this country. What really frustrates me is that (President) Obama wants to raise taxes and stop tax breaks for corporations.

“If they could give those tax breaks to small businesses … I’ve never gotten a tax break from anybody. How do I get a tax break? I’d like to know,” she said.