A Suburban Exodus?

So, does all this point to a mass suburban exodus, a reverse-flight to the city that is as profound and influential as the flight to the suburbs was in the latter half of the 20th century? For Shantel Shimkus, a broker and relocation specialist with Ryan Hill Realty, if such a thing were to ever occur, it would not be at the expense of the greater Naperville area, and for one main reason – schools.

“The school districts are phenomenal, and that’s probably one of the No. 1 reasons that people move to the Naperville area, hands-down,” Shimkus says, adding that Naperville’s schools are of such quality, that even her relocating clients know of their high caliber.

“Even the people who relocate know about Naperville’s schools,” she says. “It amazes me when they call me and say, ‘We’re from so and so, and all we hear about are Naperville’s schools.’ That’s what they want. And I can’t blame them – they are rated way up there.”

Indeed, Naperville’s public school system is among the most acclaimed in Chicagoland. In a recent ranking of Chicagoland schools by Chicago magazine, three of Naperville’s high schools – Naperville Central High School, Neuqua Valley High School and Naperville North High School – were respectively the second, third, and fourth best high schools in all of DuPage County, and in a similar list by the Chicago Tribune, all three schools were ranked within the top 25 for all of Chicagoland.

Those schools, Shimkus says, are also the dominant reason for another kind of migration to Naperville – newlyweds and aspiring families. As a top-producing agent, Shimkus deals with a wide variety of clients, many of whom have teenage children. Inevitably, a number of those children, she says, move to the city of Chicago to experience the lively energy of an urban environment, but in her experience (and Shimkus has lived and worked in Naperville her entire life), they always end up returning to Naperville.

“They always come back,” Shimkus says. “When I meet someone who lives in the city, and I ask them, ‘What brings you to the [Naperville] area?’ they say, ‘Well, we’re getting married, we’re starting a family and we don’t want to raise a family in the city. We want to be in the suburbs.’ There are quite a few schools in Naperville, but they’re all fantastic. You want the best for your kids, and that’s where you want to be.”

And the data does continue to uphold that trend. According to the same aforementioned Trulia analysis – which found home prices to be rising faster in Chicago than the suburbs – the population of the suburbs is still outpacing the city, with the suburbs’ 0.56 percent growth rate higher than the city’s 0.31.

But there’s more to the suburbs, Shimkus explains, than their wonderful schools. In recent years, commercial development has pushed many suburban towns far beyond the “boring” stereotypes they used to hold, and there are now numerous recreational options for the whole family.

“The suburbs now are not like the suburbs years ago, when there was nothing around,” she says. “You don’t have to go to downtown Chicago anymore; the suburbs offer all those types of things now. They’ve got the farmer’s markets; Naperville’s got the Rib Fest; many of the neighborhoods even have miniature zoos now, like in Aurora at the Phillips Park Zoo. There’s so much to do in the suburbs you really don’t have to go to the city anymore.”

Such amenities, Shimkus concludes, also go towards creating a real sense of community, one that is unique to each and every family she works with; and that community, then, further influences the decisions of newlyweds and fledgling families to return to the western suburbs, where their parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles are all established members of the community.

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