1600 Eagle Way

Lake Villa, IL 60046

April 2019

Mr. Karl Warwick

Village Administrator
65 Cedar Ave
P.O. Box 519
Lake Villa, IL 60046

Dear Mr. Karl Warwick:

We are a group of students enrolled at Lakes Community High School. For our senior
project in AP US Government, we chose to focus our civics project engagement on improving
and promoting the growth of business in the Lake Villa community.

Overall, we feel that Lake Villa would largely benefit from this and feel the community
would become a more involved and cultured community. Within the township of Lake Villa, the
population has since grown to over 9,000 residents since its establishment in 1912. Yet, with the
continued growth within the past decade, there has been little correlation to an increase in
business and industrialization, unlike many other neighboring cities. In an effort to improve Lake
Villa’s economic opportunities, we are seeking to reshape Lake Villa’s downtown infrastructure
district by promoting and advocating for policies that welcome local business development.

We understand that you have created the TOD Plan in an effort to help enhance the
business district within Lake Villa. We wanted resurface this idea and hear from you in regards
to how this was created and whether it is still a possibility of implementing in our community.
By doing so, Lake Villa will be able to add an increased number of businesses and corporations
that will foster a steady tourism and shopping population that will provide consistent revenue to
the city’s economy. As a result, Lake Villa will have future opportunities to continually grow
and expand off of this base program to catalyze the town into the business industry.

As a part of this project, we are reaching out to you to request more information on Lake
Villa’s plan and implementation to increase the revenue and business growth in our community.
To assist the village board on this task, and to make the request more appealing and
approachable, we are happy to offer further suggestions to gain public and community support
for this task by proposing the idea of establishing designated committees and campaigns to
further publicize the plan. This would include marketing, organization, and development as well
as oversight over all projects aimed at revitalizing the historic downtown area. By taking
meaningful steps in getting the community more engaged in the development of the town, we
hope to improve the economy and infrastructure of Lake Villa overall.

We thank you in advance for all of your consideration and help in providing us with more
information.

Sincerely,

Adam Hartzer
Carmen Martinez
Colin McElduff
Lakes Community High School | Class of 2019