NEWS
Daniel Czuba, a longtime West Chicago realtor featured on our latest episode, “Why is it so hard to develop Main Street?” was approved at June 1’s city council meeting as the latest member of the Downtown Revitalization Commission, with a vote of 8-5-1 (yes, no, and abstain). He was recommended to the commission by Mayor Daniel Bovey.
Update: Voting aye were Beebe, Alcántar-García, Santiago, Carreto-Muñoz, Hernandez, Smith, Aviña Soto and Myers. Voting nay were Stout, Dimas, Sheahan, Birch Ferguson, and Swiatek. Morano abstained.
A significant group of council members opposed Czuba’s appointment, citing his inappropriate comments at last year’s May 5 swearing-in ceremony of the new mayor and newly-elected city council members, among other reasons. Czuba has been vehemently opposed to the previous mayoral administration and, in our last episode, called that administration, “I wouldn’t even say a big brother but more like a bad stepdad. Instead of getting along with the family just kept reminding them of the rules.”
Czuba moved to West Chicago from Lombard in 1978 when he bought a pet store on Main Street and soon after got into realty.
“Back then I didn’t talk a lot. I smiled a lot,” Czuba said to Liuan in a 2022 interview for her article on West Chicago’s thorium history. “I was putting houses on the market in West Chicago and advertising them in Lombard.”
People would ask Czuba to see a house they thought was in Lombard. “I’d get them in the car, then just start going west. As soon as I said, ‘Oh we’re going out to West Chicago,’ people said, ‘Oh I don’t want to go to West Chicago.’”
Prejudice against the town’s Hispanic community was the primary reason people from other suburbs were disinterested in buying in West Chicago, Czuba said, along with the growing awareness of the town’s radiation contamination issues from the old Kerr-McGee factory (more on that in a coming episode). Czuba was the only realtor who joined the Thorium Action Group, which advocated successfully to move the factory waste out of town.
Czuba attempted to run for mayor in the 2021 election but was not allowed on the ballot after an objection filed by local resident Tristan Moffet which stated that Czuba did not live at the West Chicago address listed on his candidate application (Czuba’s realty office).
A similar concern arose in the 2025 election when mayoral candidate Joseph Sheehan ran for election using an address in the Burr Oaks apartment complex while operating his campaign out of a house in Winfield. No objections were filed and Sheehan continued his run for office through the April 1 election.
The Downtown Revitalization Commission was established by the city council in August 2025 as a temporary working group to lead the city’s efforts to infuse new life into the struggling downtown. Members have included Chair Greg Salzman, alderman Dan Beebe, Daniela Ballines, Omar Espinosa, Denise Kolode, alderman Matthew Myers, Sara Phalen, David Sabathne, and Fernando Rodriguez.
Czuba is eager to contribute his “candid honesty” to the group’s efforts. He wrote to us in a text, “I have no personal agenda other than to hold our leadership accountable for the responsibilities they have agreed to accept on behalf of the citizens, the taxpayers, and the business people who just want a fair shake when investing their hopes, energies, and money into our community.”
The next meeting of the commission takes place on Monday, June 22, at 6:00pm.