Local Residents Flock to Cafes for Power

The loss of power for North Shore residents after meant a business gain for Highland Park coffee shops on Wednesday.

“We were searching for a place [that] we could not only have wifi but actually plug in because our power is out at home and figured we’ll be gone for a long time,” said Brooke Voss, a mother who is also a fundraiser for The Cradle Adoption Agency.

As of Thursday afternoon, about 1,300 Highland Park residents remain . According to a release issued by the city, power should be restored by Friday, at the latest.

“We have a downed power line in our backyard and pretty much don’t have an idea when ComEd is going to get there,” said Voss, who camped out at Highland Park’s Corner Bakery with her son, who was checking in on Facebook and doing other things online.

Typically, Voss works from home and loves it.  Matt, her son, is a student at Monmouth College in Illinois and is home for the summer. On Wednesday, they were just happy to have somewhere to sit inside from the rain and have Internet access.

Just a few doors down at the Port Clinton Square Starbucks, Glencoe resident Daniel Crowley would normally be crisscrossing the country running quality management programs for Delta Dental, but he happened to be home this week during the severe storm. When his family received an alert that Glencoe homes would be without power, he predicted that his local haunts–the downtown Glencoe coffee shops–would be in the same predicament. So he headed north in search of wifi access.

“When you need a change of scenery, this is the place to come,” said Crowley, whose main office is in San Francisco.

Kevin Sprague, a master’s degree student at Trinity University in Bannockburn, works part time at that Starbucks, but this morning he was without power at school and home. He too came to an all-too-familiar place to study, for which he needed to be online.

Sprague shared a table with one of his morning regulars, Hunter Koopman, who runs Koopman Construction and lives on the south end of Fort Sheridan. The businessman, too, was without power at home.

By mid-afternoon, Koopman had already been there for six hours, plugged in with the laptop, headset and smart phone–charging from the wall socket while reviewing a newspaper.

“I come here every day, but I usually don’t stay,” he said. “I get my coffee and leave. But today, well, they’ve got electricity. You don’t realize how dependent you are on electricity 'til you lose it.”