The Pantagraph from Bloomington, Illinois • Page 25

Focus Abby C2 Back Then C3 Club Clipboard C3 TT HunaayXAprfl 26, 1998 A FACE BEHIND 1 TH Bloomington developer Vem Prenzler chuckled during a recent meeting with his architect. v.r -x A -K x- "x- xv-, -J C3 By JAMES KEERAN Pantagraph staff JL or or most of his life, Vera Prenzler has con long, though. Two years later he graduated from a lumber dealer short course at the University of Washington, later the same year, 1954, he met and fell in love with Ruth Urquhart, who would soon become his wife and the mother of their three children. But on the job, Vern was looking around town, studying how the other lumber dealers were conducting their businesses and figuring out where his life was going. "I noticed," he said, "that West Side Lumber Co.

had a large number of lots in town, and if we wanted to build anything, we'd have a tough time." That observation marked the beginning of Vern Prenzler's metamorphosis from lumber salesman to developer. "I always admired Charlie (Hall)," Vern said. "He sort of put his hand on me a little bit." Hall was a bit of a risk taker, and he was the man who told Vern about the availability of a piece of property west of the old Illinois Soldiers' and Sailors' Children's Home in Normal. It was owned by a woman named Fannie Bright. Vern talked to her.

He talked to his banker. He took a deep breath and he bought some of the property. He divided the property into 44 lots. He contracted for streets and sidewalks, sewers and water mains. He built his first house at 1005 N.

Beech St. He named the subdivision Brightview. He was 30 years old, he was in debt and he was a developer. The 60-lot North Park subdivision followed. "We wanted to sell the lumber," he said, "so I felt like I had to do this." Meanwhile, the lumber busi-ness was changing.

A cash and carry building cerned himself with changing the way Bloom-ington-Normal looks. From the first subdivision he developed in 1958, to opening Lumber Lane and Lumber Land, to College Hills Mall, to White Oak Park, to Constitution Place, to Old Farm Lakes subdivision, the name Prenzler has been to the Twin Cities building scene about as important as Lincoln's was to logs. Now, as he continues to expand the boundaries of the Twin Cities, he also considers his roots and his legacy, and he looks for new challenges in old places. Vern Prenzler wasn't the first developer in Bloomington-Normal, nor will he be the last. He hasn't been the biggest, either, or the smallest, richest, poorest, fastest, slowest.

But for 40 years in one location after another, a street or a water main or a sidewalk or sewer line has been going in on land owned by Vern Prenzler alone or with partners. It wasn't that Prenzler set out to change the way the Twin Cities look. That's just the way it turned out as he went about making his living. When he was born Aug. 11, 1928, at the old St.

Joseph's Hospital, his parents had only about a half-mile trip to bring him to their home overlooking the east side of Miller Park. He grew up in that neighborhood, attending Trinity Lutheran School. He worked at the peanut stand in Miller Park during his high school summers, saving money for col- L--sHr i i 1 -1 it irt I The PantagrapWSTEVE SMEDLEY 'By 1 966 we knew we had to do something or we were going to be getting a big charlie in town to take the business away from Prenzler listened to Jim Allen, left, vice president of The Prenzler Group, concerning building at the Eddy Road job site. lege, eight hours a day, six days a week, all for $12. "That," he said, "was a great education." His father had a small interest in and was manager of Corn Belt Lumber Co.

at 309 S. Lee just a few blocks away from home and school and church. The major partners in that business were W.W. Tilden and Charlie Hall, who developed, among other properties in town, the Tilden-Hall Hotel. Although Tilden died the year Vern was born, the materials store opened outside of Farmer City and sold some things at retail for less than Corn Belt Lumber could buy them wholesale.

Vern had to learn a new way of doing business. The customer would no longer be only the contractor who would buy a truckload of wood, cut and milled to certain specifications: It would also be the home handyman who might want a small package of nails, a couple of boards and a new IT i -Vern Prenzler boy grew up with great admi- ration for both men, and his father, and the business they ran. Vern graduated from Bloomington High School about the time World War II came to an end, and from Illinois Wesleyan University in 1950. He was drafted and spent the next two years with the Army in Europe. And although he traveled as much as he could on the continent, his heart was back in Bloomington at Corn Belt Lumber.

"I always loved the lumber business," he said. So, his Army service behind him, he came to work in his father's lumber yard as a salesman. That wouldn't last Architect Robert Edwards, left, met with Prenzler while planning a project outside Prenzler's office at 712 East Empire St. "X' I -X 4 Prenzler met with Allen and Edwards at T-. Prenzler's office.

To the right are designs for several of Prenzler's developments. 1 saw while he was at it. The "romance" of the old way still intrigued him, but the call of the new was too loud to ignore. He started Lumber Lane, a small cash and carry operation on East Empire Street in 1961, the same year he got elected to the Bloomington City Council, while he continued working at Corn Belt and developing subdivisions: Lincoln-wood and Northgate came in 1962. Prenzler had run for the council a few years earlier and was beaten.

He wanted on the council because he enjoyed, and still enjoys, politics, because he loved the city and because he thought somebody in his position to see the city help it grow. General Electric and IAA moved to Bloomington in the late '50s and early '60s. Firestone soon followed. That meant a lot of new jobs and a lot of need for new houses. The boom meant Bloomington-Normal would no longer be a sleepy little farm town on the prairie.

It wasn't a metropolis, but the geography was changing, the boundaries were expanding, and Prenzler was riding the wave of growth. By the mid -'60s Vern was manager of Corn Belt and he owned Lumber Lane, and he realized the lumber business was continuing to change. These cash and carry operations were becoming something akin to home building and repair supermarkets. "By 1966 we knew we had to do something or we were going to be getting a big charlie in town to take the business away from us." Vern formed a coalition with three other lumber dealers so they could buy in greater quantity and sell cheaper. He also got elected to the McLean County Board and opened his own supermarket, Lumber Land, on the 102-acre Northtown Industrial Park he and his partners developed at the north edge of Normal.

In 1969, he seemed to find his groove. "I'm not a detail person," he says, holding a pencil in his right hand and an ever present legal pad in his left. He quickly sketches out the boundaries of a subdivision and maybe an idea for a few interior roads, maybe even a lot or two, and when the general idea is communicated, he rips the page away and is on to something new. That year, 1969, he and his partners bought See BOOM, C4 I 7" 1 if.