The Uptown Theatre in September 1925, during the decade Hayes Mechanical was establishing itself in the neighborhood. Photo: Balaban & Katz / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
Few businesses in Uptown can say they were here before the neighborhood’s chamber of commerce. Hayes Mechanical Inc. can. The family-owned company has served Uptown since 1918, five years before the local chamber was founded.
The firm will be honored at a networking luncheon hosted by Business Partners, the Chamber for Uptown, from noon to 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 2, at Andies Restaurant, 1467 W. Montrose Ave. It is the group’s first networking lunch of the year. Tickets are $20 for a Mediterranean family-style meal, and reservations are requested.
Third generation
Hayes is now in its third generation of family ownership. Mechanical contractors handle heating, cooling, plumbing and ventilation systems, the unglamorous work that keeps apartment buildings, offices and storefronts running through Chicago winters and summers.
A company that has lasted nearly 90 years in one neighborhood has seen a great deal of change. When Hayes started, Uptown was booming. The elevated line had reached Wilson Avenue, and the entertainment district around Broadway and Lawrence was about to produce the Aragon Ballroom and the Uptown Theatre. The company stayed through the neighborhood’s postwar decline and its more recent wave of condo conversions.
A chance to meet a neighbor
Organizers bill the lunch as a way for other owners to share a meal and learn how a third-generation company has adapted. Andies serves Mediterranean food on Montrose Avenue, west of the Red Line.
Long-lived family firms are increasingly rare in city neighborhoods, where rising rents and retirements often close businesses that have no successor. Hayes is an example of the opposite: a company that kept growing in the same community for close to a century.
Marcus Hadley covers business, transit and real estate in Uptown.
