The newest large subdivision in Clarendon Hills is Stonegate located just south of Ogden Avenue and bordered in the south by Hinsdale Golf Club. Stonegate is served by Community Consolidated School District 181 for grade and middle schools Hinsdale Township High School District 86 for High School (Hinsdale Central). Below is a great article from our local newspaper – The Doings on home owners who love their Clarendon Hills subdivision.
August 19, 2010
By SARA CLARKSON Town columns
This week’s little bit typifies why people move to our villages, stay here and come back when they could choose other places — people like Morse and Lynn Shankman, Brian O’Donnell and Amy DeBoer to name but a few.
This short but certainly not exclusive roster is a list of people who have moved out of and then returned to the Stonegate subdivision in Clarendon Hills. Later this month at the annual Stonegate block party, the subdivision will celebrate more than just friendship. Stonegate residents will celebrate 50 years of the neighborhood, figuring that the first house was built in 1960. The theme of the block party is “dress as your favorite Stonegate decade.” Amazingly, several original owners still live within Stonegate’s boundaries of Ogden Avenue to the north, Stonegate to the west, Naperville to the south and Larkspur and Columbine curling in between those roads.
Karen Klein, a Columbine Street resident, is organizing this year’s block party. She and her husband moved to the area 12 years ago with every intention of someday moving out to a bigger house. Instead, they have found themselves going through two major renovations rather than leaving the neighborhood.
“It’s a bit unique. We don’t want to move,” she said.
Surprisingly there are some 80 to 85 houses in the Stonegate subdivision, she said, and hers is well-known as the “Laimbeer House,” the house where former NBA player Bill Laimbeer grew up before graduating from the University of Notre Dame and playing for the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Detroit Pistons.
“It’s just a great neighborhood to raise kids,” said Amy DeBoer, who grew up in Stonegate from the age of 10 with her mom, Diane Robertson Cochran. DeBoer went off to college and ended up marrying a young man from Hinsdale, where they rented a house until an opportunity to buy in Stonegate. She, her husband, and three teenage daughters have lived on Columbine for 12 years now, and mom Diane is still nearby.
Ann and Fred Hamman moved to Stonegate in 1971 when their house was already 5 years old. They had wanted to live in Clarendon Hills before then, but the $25,000 price tag on some homes was a little too high. By the time they moved from Brookfield in 1971, their circumstances had changed and they could afford their house, listed at $64,000.
“We liked Clarendon Hills, the town, the schools, and a lot of families in the neighborhood,” Ann said.
She had no idea what a community Stonegate already was by that time. There was a couples marathon bridge group, annual golf, and tennis opens, a regular golf bunch as well as a bowling league.
“They had a lot of parties, too,” Anna said, with Fred echoing her in the background. “We got to know our neighbors.”
Ann figures that when their daughter graduated from Hinsdale Central in 1981, there were 18 other kids in Stonegate also graduating. Ann, by the way, worked at The Doings for 18 years, including many writing this particular column.
Not all of the lots were sold in the early ’70s, so the village would flood one or two of them in the winter to create an ice rink. In the warmer months, the kids would use the empty lots for pick up baseball games, recalled Brian O’Donnell, who also grew up in Stonegate, left and returned the first chance he could to raise his own family.
“It’s one of the old-time neighborhoods,” O’Donnell said.
The Shankman family on Larkspur first moved to Stonegate and settled happily in only to be transferred to Ireland. They sold their house but upon their return, they bought another Stonegate house.
“It’s a true neighborhood,” said Lynn. “It’s a wonderful place to raise your kids.”
Traffic alert
One of the most frustrating places to be these days is behind the wheel of a car on village streets. Just about every street and pavement, it seems, is being torn up and that 2-mile trip that used to take 10 minutes now seems to require an out-of-the-way, avoid-the-mines type of route requiring an infinite amount of patience.
And next week school starts again. That’s right, these are summer’s waning days and students will have put away their bathing suits and summer gear and be sporting fresh uniforms on Monday when the parochial schools open. On Wednesday expect to see groggy teens making their way as Hinsdale Central starts, and the livelier and younger crowd of District 181 students start Aug. 26. Allow a little extra time and be careful as the students won’t be paying attention to the traffic the way they should.