VIDEO: New Lenox Lumber Yard Demolished

After at least a decade of sitting idly and deteriorating, the old New Lenox Lumber & Hardware Company was torn down. The eyesore was off Cedar Road, just north Hickory Creek and the Metra station.

The village paid about $16,000 to tear down the buildings, but that money will be liened against the current property owner, who was given one year to do it himself but failed to meet the deadline.

Part of the reason it took so long to demolish the site was the terrible creek flooding the area has experienced over the years. The village needed to first study that location to make sure the flooding wouldn't get worse after the buildings were torn down.

Full of History

Despite being known as an eyesore for the last decade, the New Lenox Lumber & Hardware Company is a site full of history.

Resident Ron Whitaker said his grandfather, George Hacker, opened the company in 1927 along with his sons-in-law, Ceward Batson and Frank Valy.

"Originally it was just an old-fashioned lumber yard, but after World War II they got into the home-building business."

While doing that, they started a unique construction method called "owner completion," which would be replicated by others companies across the country. This involved building the shell of a home and letting the owner do as much or as little as he wanted to finish it.

"It was very individualized," Whitaker said. "It enabled a lot of people, such as veterans, to get homes they perhaps couldn't afford otherwise."

In 1927, it was one of the first developments north of Hickory Creek, and in the mid-1930s a gas station opened, as well as a grocery store operated by Whitaker's father.

Along the way, Frank Valy's sons, George and Glenn, came into the business and split it in two, with Ceward Batson managing the International Harvester Farm Implement Dealer, which sold machinery such as tractors and combines.

At one point, George's son Dennis, along with son-in-law Doug Boyd, took over the lumber yard. At one point the company had a branch along Wolf Road in Mokena, where is now.

The lumber company eventually closed around 2000, in part because the Valy family dispersed and moved away from New Lenox. Whitaker said the big box stores' interest in the village wasn't the cause of its closing because that was before the likes of (and soon to be Menard's) moved into town.

Village officials couldn't be reached to discuss the future plans for the site, but a sign at the property shows a mixed-use development, which is the current zoning for the location.