95-year-old tells the story of how Schaumburg began

In many people's minds, the story of Schaumburg's growth into the commercial hub of the Northwest suburbs begins with the opening of Woodfield in 1971.

But 95-year-old Kaj (“Ky”) Frandsen of Palatine knows better.

Frandsen knows it all started nearly 15 years earlier with the construction of the Pure Oil building on the opposite side of Golf Road — the same building that's now Roosevelt University's Schaumburg campus.

Not only was Frandsen there when the building opened in 1958, he played a pivotal role in the company's purchase of the site and surrounding land from local farmers.

“They found out I was a farmer and only wanted to talk to me,” recalls Frandsen, who was raised on a farm downstate before going to work for Pure Oil.

His wife, Ardelle, said it was a refreshingly different time in the commercial real estate market when Pure Oil officials were able to be completely upfront about the fact that they were looking to build an office building and relocate from their Chicago headquarters on Wacker Drive.

Though a corporation's move from the city to the suburbs is a scenario that's been repeated many times since, one difficulty at the time was establishing a fair and true price for land that had previously been purely agricultural, Frandsen said.

Along with the company's move came its employees' relocation to the suburbs as well. Frandsen and his growing family moved to Arlington Heights, one of the nearest residential areas to the office site which was then in unincorporated Palatine Township.

Unlike today, when the one-story building crouches behind a taller strip mall to the south and IKEA to the north, Pure Oil's headquarters sat like an island among the fields that continued to be leased to farmers.

“These farmers, they sure didn't like to see this kind of architecture popping up in their cornfields,” Frandsen said.

But the same area provided recreational opportunities for Frandsen, who'd grown up on a farm in Dwight, Ill. During his time off, he'd sometimes hunt pheasant on the land that's now Woodfield.

While the entrance to today's Roosevelt campus is on the north side of the building, the original design featured a grandiose entrance on the south, facing Golf Road. As time went on, sports fields began to appear between the building and the road.

Pure Oil's land purchase included the property to the north which was almost immediately repurchased for the development of today's Jane Addams Tollway.

But apart from that, little else changed in the area around the Pure Oil building before Union Oil — later Unocal — bought it, prompting Frandsen's departure in 1966.

He then began working for Lawyers Title Insurance and was actually happy to be commuting to the city again.

A few years later, the proposal for Woodfield turned the north side of Schaumburg into the commercial center it is today.

But did the preexistence of what was by then the Unocal building have any influence at all on that later development?

“I think if it influenced anything, it might have influenced how the village drew its master plan,” said Jane Rozek, local history librarian at the Schaumburg Township District Library.

Because the young village already had a residential area centered around the intersection of Schaumburg and Roselle roads, the existence of the Unocal building to the north might have made the area seem ready-made for commercial zoning, she said.

Schaumburg Mayor Al Larson said the business, which is about four miles from Schaumburg's core and wasn't originally within the town's boundaries, strengthened its ties to the northward growth of Schaumburg by supplying gas and oil to the village in exchange for police and fire protection.

And in the immediate aftermath of Woodfield's opening, Unocal was an active participant in a proposal for a high-density development around it that would have included condominiums, commercial property and even monorails crossing Golf Road, Larson said.

The ambitious, “far-reaching” proposal was known as Woodfield 76, Larson said.

“It was more of a concept plan than a detailed development plan,” he added. “The project never really developed along its original intention because the market changed.”

It was in the mid-'90s that Unocal retreated from the Midwest petroleum market and bowed out of the building, which then underwent its conversion to the Roosevelt University campus.

Unocal in 2005 merged with another California-based oil company, Chevron, which is now the provider of some of the retirement benefits Frandsen receives.

After more than 30 years in the Arlington Heights home where he and Ardelle raised their son and daughter, the couple have now lived in Palatine for 22 years.

Though they didn't often visit the Woodfield area for decades, they've been going more often lately to find things to do, jogging Frandsen's memory of the role he played in its early development.