Housing Market Impacts Lake Forest, Lake Bluff in 2010 Census

At 646 S. Ridge Road is a picturesque, 9,000-square-foot illustration of one reason the 2010 Census figures show population declines in both Lake Forest and Lake Bluff.

Featuring onsite tennis courts and an outdoor swimming pool, the house on Ridge has been on the market for about a year, dropping in price from $9.675 million to $5.995 million.

Simply put, the area’s palatial homes have become a tougher sell in an era dominated by downsizing, local officials and realtors say.

Recently-released Census data show a 3.4 percent smaller population in Lake Forest and a 5.5 percent decline in Lake Bluff – the largest of all the North Shore communities.

Total population in Lake Forest is now 19,375, and Lake Bluff’s is 5,722.

Local housing vacancies are also up in the 2010 Census: to 9.1 percent in Lake Forest from 4.5 percent 10 years ago and 5.6 percent in Lake Bluff as compared with 3.8 percent in 2000. The Lake County vacancy rate was 8.7 percent; in Illinois, it was 7.1.

Catherine Czerniak, director of community development for , said even before the economy began tanking, area demographics were prompting many to downsize.

“We know we have an aging population in Lake Forest,” Czerniak said, adding that “the baby boomer blip” is at the tail end of transitioning to being empty-nesters, who often sell the big family home and downsize.

“None of these changes are significant, alarming or surprising,” she said.

Following state and national trends, over the past 10 years, the percentage of residents older than school age has risen to 75 percent from 72 percent in Lake Forest and to 70 percent from 67 percent in Lake Bluff.

Exacerbating the trend, between the two Censuses, a major economic crisis hit, forcing many to consider selling their homes just as the market bottomed out.

The climate contributed to several stalled housing developments and proposed developments in Lake Forest and Lake Bluff.

For example, a planned development of duplexes called Willow Lake, “probably would have attracted mostly empty nesters or families with older kids,” Czerniak said.

All the utilities and infrastructure was built at the site near Townline Park, but not a single unit. 

The partially built Amberley Woods development was expected to be complete by now, Czerniak said, and proposals for a development called Bear Campus and for city-owned property at Laurel and Western Avenues are indefinitely stalled.

In Lake Bluff, which had the largest percentage drop in population on the North Shore, three developments were stalled: Stone Bridge, Wimbledon Estates and Landsdowne, according to Brandon Stanick, assistant to the Village Administrator.

“We presumed our population would remain close to the 2000 Census,” Stanick said.

Because not all the Census figures have been released – notably, those listing household size and income are yet to come out – Stanick declined to give any reason for the population decline.

“It would be irresponsible of me to speculate,” he said.

Area realtor Scott Lackie, president of Griffith, Grant and Lackie, agreed demographics, the economy and the housing crisis have all played into population declines and housing vacancies.

But a sharp uptick in rentals around the time Census takers were out may also be coming into play, he said, causing some residents to go uncounted.

With housing sales continuing to lag, “we have done more rental transactions the past year than we did in the past 10 years,” Lackie said.

Renters are statistically less likely to be counted than homeowners for a variety of reasons, including a lag between when owners move and renters take occupancy.

“It’s possible they may not have caught up with some of the rental people,” Lackie said.

John Asplund,  superintendent of , confirmed a decline of entering kindergarteners of about 5 percent, and said its projections were that enrollments would continue to decline slightly but stabilize.

“We’re getting closer to a point of stasis,” Asplund said. “These things go up and down eventually.”

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2010 Census.