While the majority of the Elmhurst Chamber of Commerce & Industry’s once-in-a-lifetime $250,000 Centennial Celebration Capital Campaign fundraising has exceeded its goals, work to develop a public Civic Hall of Fame Memorial will continue on a parallel track with plans to rebuild downtown Elmhurst’s Metra train station, its projected home.
The City of Elmhurst has already raised $16.4 million in federal, state and local grants and other funding towards the projected $18 million cost to more than double the size of the current train station to better serve the more than 2,300 passengers from Elmhurst and neighboring municipalities commuting daily via rail.
Elmhurst’s station ranks No. 1 in boardings along Metra’s Union Pacific West Line and is the seventh busiest of all the Metra stops throughout Chicagoland.
With a fundraising goal of $50,000, the Civic HOF project is part of our $100,000 Second Century Fund, which also includes a $50,000 business educational component. To date, some $11,650 in gifts and pledges towards the memorial.
Of those Civic Hall of Famers still living and in the area, many of them have made gifts or pledges to support the project.
Thanks primarily to the generosity of its namesake, the Ralph P. Pechanio Student Internship Endowment at Elmhurst College has exceeded its $150,000 goal by some $10,000. Some donors have committed to annual or monthly gifts, which can be made directly to EC.
The Pechanio Endowment Fund reimburses ECCI the 40 percent of an EC student intern’s hourly wages not covered by our Chamber’s participation in the Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE) JOBPATH program.
At our 100th Annual Awards Gala at The Drake Oak Brook Hotel on January 25, Genie Urick, author and former producer of Elmhurst Our Kind of Town (and many cable TV programs), became the 27th inductee in our Civic HOF.
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