Business View Magazine | April 2020

201 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE APRIL 2020 N ew Lenox is a Village in Will County Illinois, located on Interstate 80 with interchanges at I-355 and US Route 30, some 31 miles southwest of Chicago. Although the area was originally settled in the late 1820s, and became a township in 1852, the Village of New Lenox was not officially incorporated until 1946. Today, New Lenox is a thriving community of approximately 28,000 that is constantly growing its rich mixture of residential, commercial, and industrial properties. In fact, in 2019, the Village issued a total of $68.9 million worth of new building permits - $44M in new residential development; $13.6M in commercial development; $5.6 in industrial development; and $5.7 in institutional development. “We consider ourselves a very progressive community because we are very pro- business,” says Economic Development Coordinator, Nancy Dye. “For example, we had 34 new businesses open in 2019, and we have had approximately 1,000 residential housing permits issued in the last five years. We have an expedited review process for projects, and it doesn’t take a month to get a permit. We want people to come here, so we’re not going to let red tape slow them down. We also have many community events to engage our residents and businesses to make them feel that we want them to enjoy living and working here. We make development happen because we have a vision of how we want New Lenox to grow and that vision is for more families, more events, and more housing. That is what the Village Board strives for.” One of New Lenox’s key institutions is the 300-bed Silver Cross Hospital. “It was actually a hospital in Joliet that built a brand new facility and relocated to New Lenox in 2012,” explains Assistant Village Administrator and Community Development Director, Robin Ellis. “In addition to the hospital, itself, there’s been over half-a-million square feet of other medical offices in other buildings around it. So, it’s turned into a nice medical campus. And it’s a successful hospital because NEW LENOX, ILLINOIS GROWING TOGETHER