CHICAGOBUSINESS.COM I JULY 1, 2024
Troubled waters? Chicago is downplaying the threat of losing its biggest water customer — DuPage
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hicago will soon begin another round of high-stakes negotiations with the DuPage Water Commission in a bid to retain the city’s largest water customer, but the commission’s recent $80 million suburban land purchase adds bite to its threat to tap into Lake Michigan to bypass the city and become its own water supplier. City officials are downplaying the purchase, arguing that despite the outlay, the water commission’s best option is to remain a city customer under a new rate that will take effect in 2030 rather than venturing on the “risky” path of building its GETTY IMAGES
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Chicago still grappling with Jim Crown’s death A year on, his absence exposes a leadership vacuum not just within his family’s business empire, but also within a broader civic community By Steven R. Strahler
A year after his passing, the void Jim Crown left behind has proved challenging to fill not just within his family’s multifaceted business empire but in a civic community where some worry the old expectations of leadership are fading. Crown died in a racetrack accident on June 25, 2023, in Colorado on his 70th birthday, just weeks after the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago unveiled a violencereduction program he championed, one that fell outside the group’s comfort-zone focus on transportation, education and
state finance. His death cast a pall over Chicago’s civic community and renewed scrutiny of the city’s boardroom commitment to philanthropic causes against the backdrop of a corporate headquarters drain blamed in part on the city’s bleak homicide record. Crown’s younger sister, Susan Crown, says the family’s collection of investment and operating companies dating to Material Service Corp., founded by her grandfather Henry and his brothers in 1919, was structured through Jim’s tenure like a patriarchy over three generations. Don’t count on that setup continuing, she says. The next
generation is taking its place, but Crown’s death has paused succession planning. “We’ve been rethinking family governance. How that ought to look like is something we’re sorting out. Between the suddenness, the trauma and the grief, we’re just not there yet.”
Multiple roles Jim Crown possessed a combination of relationships and experience that underpinned his business, family and civic roles. His billionaire clan’s roots, of course, went deep into the city’s social fabric. His connection to corporate America and global politics ran through board seats that were
Jim Crown | THE CROWN FAMILY
family sinecures at bank JPMorgan Chase and defense contractor General Dynamics. He chaired prestigious think tank the Aspen Institute and added to the
glitz as managing partner of the family-owned Aspen Skiing Co. At 6-foot-2, he could command
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