For sale: Zion’s Christmas tradition
BY MARK KONKOL Staff Reporter/mkonkol@suntimes.com December 23, 2011 8:56PM
A Kringle's Kingdom display at the Zion Shiloh House last year. | Ryan Pagelow~Sun-Times Media
Updated: January 25, 2012 8:06AM
For Sale: Small town Christmas. Seeking best offer.
Strapped for cash, the City of Zion is hawking “Kringle’s Kingdom,” the town’s massive collection of holiday displays — handmade window boxes, a drive-thru wonderland of lights and enough holiday ornaments to decorate 525 Christmas trees.
Locals say the “Festival of Lights” that twinkled in the heart of town were as special as the holiday window displays at the former Marshall Field’s in the Loop used to be.
Two years ago, Zion pulled the plug on the holiday festival, hoping to revive it if the city’s financial picture improved. With no economic recovery in sight, Zion leaders now hope city leaders from the tiny town of Elkader, Iowa, take the Christmas decorations off their hands for $5,000 — or their best offer.
“It’s sad. It’s devastating,” said Zion City Clerk Diane Burkemper, who organized the holiday festival for 11 years. “There isn’t anything that was like Kringle’s Kingdom. It was miraculous. . . . Those display boxes were built and decorated by local folks. It was classy with a homespun feel, very unique.”
But Zion’s budget problems are so dire that the city can’t afford to pay $2,431-a-month in rent to store unused Christmas decorations, said commissioner Jim Taylor, who has taken over Mayor Lane Harrison’s duties for the past six weeks. Harrison has been absent from his full-time post and has missed four public meetings because of an unspecified illness.
“There comes a point that we’re throwing good money after bad,” said Taylor, once a Festival of Lights volunteer, whose pants were once started on fire by a heater while he volunteered on a particularly chilly night. “We hate to get rid of it. It was absolutely stunning. But the city is in a budget crisis.”
On top of the budget woes, Zion also is being sued by the Lake County Fielders, an independent minor league team whose owners include Academy Award-winner Kevin Costner.
The $10.7 million lawsuit claims the city and stadium property owner engaged in fraudulent actions that prevented construction of a permanent stadium and violated the city’s lease agreement. The lawsuit also names Harrison, former Zion Economic Development Director Delaine Rogers and developer Richard Delisle.
Kringle’s Kingdom and the rest of Zion’s unused Christmas decorations are stored at the historic Warrick Building, a former lace factory whose previous owner let the city store the decorations there for free, Burkemper said.
That changed after the building was sold to Deborah Avenue Investors, a company controlled by Delisle, a prolific Zion developer with close ties to City Hall whose projects have received millions of dollars in tax breaks, rent payments and tax increment financing funds.
Since July 2007, the city of Zion has paid Deborah Avenue Investors more than $124,000 in rent, according to public records. Even though the storage space lease expired in December 2009, the city has continued to pay the same amount for rent and utilities from month to month without renegotiating the lease.
For Beach Park grandmother Claire Erickson, the Festival of Lights was a family tradition. The longtime volunteer tried to revive the holiday festival last year, but couldn’t raise enough private cash to pull it off.
“The building was sold and the new owners didn’t have the same heart,” said Erickson, who attended a public meeting when the decoration sale was discussed. “It really shocks me that it’s Rick Delisle’s building. I didn’t know that, but I’m sure Diane did. They never brought it up.”
Taylor said Delisle’s ownership of the Warrick Building didn’t influence the city’s decision to sell Kringle’s Kingdom.
Burkemper said she hopes the display finds a good home.
“I try not to look at it as selling Christmas,” she said. “Christmas is in your heart. It’s not a bunch of wood or dolls. No matter where Kringle’s Kingdom is, whether it’s in Iowa or somewhere else, it still represents what’s in your heart.”
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