William Kallas, mayor who led efforts to bring lake water to Oakbrook Terrace, dies

William Kallas, who as mayor in the 1990s led efforts to bring Lake Michigan water to Oakbrook Terrace, has died.

William Kallas took over as mayor of Oakbrook Terrace from a scandal-plagued predecessor and led efforts to bring Lake Michigan water to the western suburb.

“Mayor Bill was the right man at the right time to bring Lake Michigan water to (the city),” said former Oakbrook Terrace Ald. Kenneth Gallt. “Few people will ever understand the hours he put in for the betterment of our residents.”

Kallas, 90, died of congestive heart failure on March 28 at a hospital near his Crossville, Tennessee, home, said his daughter, Suzanne Tidei. He had lived in Oakbrook Terrace from 1988 until moving to Tennessee in 2009.

Kallas was born in Forest Park, the son of Greek immigrants. His father ran a shoe shop. He attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Chicago Law School and served as a bombardier during the Korean War, according to his family.

Kallas spent more than 40 years working as a commercial real estate broker. In the late 1960s he was named the director of office leasing for the Maybrook Square development in Maywood, and he later served as a commercial real estate broker for the Helmsley-Spear and Plato Foufas firms.

During his career, Kallas was involved in more than 1,000 transactions and represented about 50 developers.

In 1988, Kallas and his first wife moved to Oakbrook Terrace. He was appointed to an aldermanic vacancy in 1992, and shortly afterward, announced that he would try in the 1993 election to unseat Mayor Richard F. Sarallo, who had led the city since 1969. Kallas told the Tribune that his decision to run was motivated by an ongoing federal investigation of some of the town’s elected and appointed officials, a probe that eventually sent Sarallo to federal prison for six months on a tax conviction.

“It’s my contention that somebody who has no ties whatsoever with other city officials and owes no favors to anyone needs to step in,” Kallas told the Tribune in 1992.

Ultimately, Sarallo chose not to run for reelection in 1993, and Kallas won a three-way race for mayor.

At the first City Council meeting at which Kallas presided, he fired the town’s controversial police chief and soon afterward fired its longtime legal counsel. Kallas also made good on his plan to hire the city’s first-ever paid city administrator.

“He brought change,” said Bob Shanahan, the chairman of the board of the Oakbrook Terrace Historical Society and a member of the Oakbrook Terrace Police Commission. “That meant new people on boards and commissions and a new city manager and police chief, and moving the city forward was his goal.”

While almost all of the city’s commercial businesses received lake water from neighboring Oak Brook, Oakbrook Terrace’s main, 350-home subdivision lacked a distribution system and homeowners instead used wells that drew water widely considered to be of poor quality.

A plan to fund construction of a lake water distribution system with revenue generated by an off-track betting parlor had predated Kallas’ tenure on the City Council. But he oversaw the nuts and bolts of bringing the water to the city, including building a consensus to join the DuPage Water Commission, acquiring a site for a water tower and securing a lake water allocation. The $6 million system was completed in 1999, and the first lake water began to flow to the city’s homes late that year.

“Kallas charged ahead, got us back into the DuPage Water Commission and built a water tower. I would say that’s his biggest accomplishment,” Shanahan said. “He was about change, and he definitely brought a lot of changes to the city.”

“Mayor Bill loved a challenge and loved being mayor,” Gallt said.

Not all of Kallas’ ideas succeeded. A proposal to merge Oakbrook Terrace with Oak Brook ran aground. An idea he had for a land-based casino at the northwest corner of Roosevelt Road and Illinois Highway 83 went nowhere. A plan to relocate Oakbrook Terrace’s City Hall to an existing office building on the west side of town never took off. And his bid in 1997 to seek the Republican nomination for the 13th Congressional District to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Harris Fawell lasted less than a month before Kallas decided to withdraw.

Kallas won reelection in 1997 but chose not to seek reelection in 2001. After leaving politics, Kallas co-ran Kallas Enterprises, a firm that made and marketed cookie molds, with his third wife.

A first marriage ended in divorce. Kallas’ second wife, Caroline, a onetime U.S. congressional candidate, died in 1999. In addition to his daughter, he is survived by his third wife, Sherry; a son, William; and two other daughters, Rebecca Larson and Amanda.

Services were held.

Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.