By Ronald Paul Larson
Jeni Heim, Vice-chair of the Downtown BID and co-owner of Heim’s Downtown Toy Store and Scoops, has known for a long time that she wanted to work with and around children.
Raised in southwest Chicago and Evergreen Park, a suburb south of Chicago, Jeni had worked as a nanny for several years. She attended Roosevelt University in Chicago and studied pre-med because she wanted to be a pediatrician. “I thought that was what I was going to do because I love working with kids.” While working as a nanny, she realized she was already doing what she liked, but wanted to do it in a more commercial setting. She changed her major to early childhood education, and with her husband John, opened a daycare center in 1992 near Soldier Field in the South Loop. They “were true South Loop people” living in Printer’s Row, Dearborn & Burnham Park for more than a dozen years. Their daycare center had 35 employees and 153 students. “It was pretty well established,” Jeni notes.
Ultimately, they knew they wanted to live somewhere outside Chicago but close enough to maintain their business in the city. They looked at Gary, Indiana and the suburbs north of Chicago. They kept going north thinking “we can’t afford it.” Jeni’s father lived on the South Side of Chicago but here mother lived in Paddock Lake. Jeni visited her mother often, but knew she did not want to live in the county. During one visit, her mother suggested they drive east, toward Lake Michigan. Jeni had never been east of 22nd St in Kenosha. “As soon as we hit Allendale, we loved it.” When they saw the lake at the end of 75th st., they felt “This is it! We said this is where were going to raise our kids.” A little more than five years ago they moved into a historic house in Allendale, just a few blocks from the toy store.
The first year Jeni and her family lived in Kenosha, she commuted to Chicago four days a week, leaving at a 5 a.m. One morning, she was in a bad mood, loading her car, and thought “I can’t believe I can hear traffic.” Continue reading →
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