Why We Stayed in Mount Prospect: 30 Years in One Suburb
Roofing companies move. They expand into new markets, get acquired, rebrand, relocate. We didn't. Thirty years in the same Mount Prospect address. Here's why staying put was the right call — and what it means for the customers who hire us.
Most roofing companies don't make it 30 years
The roofing industry has high churn. Companies open, build a customer base, scale aggressively, take on debt or investor capital, and either get acquired or go under within a decade. After major hail events, a wave of new companies appears, many of which won't be around five years later. Storm-chaser companies are explicitly designed to operate this way — descend on a region after a storm, do quick volume, leave before warranty issues surface. The contractor who's actually been at the same address for 30 years is unusual. We've watched dozens of competitor companies open and close around us during our three decades here. The continuity isn't an accident — it's a deliberate choice that has shaped the entire business.
Why we stayed in Mount Prospect specifically
Mount Prospect is centrally located for our service area — northwest Cook County, north into Lake County, and west into the affluent DuPage corridor. From our Mount Prospect base we can be at any project in Arlington Heights, Des Plaines, Park Ridge, Elk Grove Village, Wheeling, Buffalo Grove, Palatine, or Schaumburg within 15-20 minutes. North Shore work in Winnetka, Glencoe, Kenilworth, Lake Forest, and Highland Park is 20-30 minutes from the office. Lake County work in Libertyville, Vernon Hills, and Lincolnshire is 25-35 minutes. The geographic accessibility is a real advantage. But the deeper reason for staying is the cumulative knowledge of the local building stock, the property managers, the architectural review committees, and the seasonal weather patterns that affect every project.
Knowing the local building stock matters more than people think
Every Chicagoland community has its own residential building-stock characteristics. Mount Prospect's mid-century brick ranches and split-levels have specific roofline conditions and ventilation challenges. Arlington Heights's mix of older homes and newer builds has different patterns. Lake Forest's estate homes from the 1900s-1940s have unique architectural features (multi-plane hip-and-valley rooflines, complex chimney arrangements, original cedar or slate specifications) that require specific contractor experience to handle correctly. Three decades in the area means we've worked on virtually every common housing stock in our service area many times over. New contractors learning the area for the first time make mistakes that experienced local contractors don't make. Tenure is a real advantage.
Knowing the property managers matters too
On the commercial side, knowing the local property management community is similarly cumulative. The property managers handling buildings in the Mount Prospect / Elk Grove / Arlington Heights corridor know us, and we know them. We know which firms maintain reasonable maintenance budgets and which don't. We know which buildings have specific access challenges, which have tenants whose operations affect roof scheduling, which have ownership groups who want detailed capital planning versus those who want emergency-response work. Three decades of these relationships compound — when a new property is acquired by a property manager we've worked with for 12 years, we're often the first call. Commercial roof maintenance as a long-term partnership only works when the contractor has actually been around long enough to be a partner.
Knowing the architectural-review jurisdictions
Lake Forest Historic Preservation Commission. Highland Park's Sherwood Forest review. Parts of Kenilworth's tightly-controlled architectural inventory. Winnetka Indian Hill HOA. Glencoe review committees. Each has its own application process, review timelines, approval criteria, and committee preferences. Contractors who haven't been through these processes repeatedly fumble them — and the homeowner pays the cost in delayed projects, rejected applications, and frustration. We've been through every architectural review process in our service area many times. We know which committees prefer hand-split cedar versus tapersawn. We know which require physical sample submittals versus manufacturer cut-sheets. We know which expect specific drawings. The accumulation of this jurisdictional knowledge is part of what separates 30-year local tenure from a contractor who's been working the area for two.
Why we never expanded
We've had opportunities to expand into other regions over the years. We've consistently said no. The reason isn't lack of ambition — it's that the standards we hold to require local supervision, local crew development, and local quality control. A satellite office in Indianapolis or Milwaukee would be a different business operating under our name, not the same business in a new city. We'd lose the standard. We'd lose the personal accountability that comes from the founder being on most of the estate-class jobs. The roofing industry has a lot of regional roll-ups and franchise expansions; most of them produce work that's noticeably worse than what the original founders did before scaling. We chose to stay one Mount Prospect-based company doing work to a specific standard rather than become a multi-region company doing work to whatever standard was achievable at scale.
What this means for customers who hire us
When you hire Leaders Roofing in 2026, you're hiring the same company that's been in Mount Prospect since 1996. The license number on your contract is the same number on contracts from 2008 and 1998. The Mount Prospect address is the same address. The phone number that takes your call is the same phone number that took the calls in the early years. If you have a warranty issue in 2031, you'll be calling the same company. If you sell your home in 2035 and the new owner has a question about the roof, they'll be calling the same company. That continuity is one of the most valuable features of working with a long-tenured local contractor — and it's specifically what storm-chaser contractors and out-of-region operations cannot offer regardless of how aggressive their marketing is.
What 30 years in one suburb teaches you about your neighbors
Mount Prospect, Arlington Heights, Park Ridge, and the surrounding northwest suburbs are home. We've worked on the homes of people we know personally. We've been to the homes of children we knew when they were children and who now have homes of their own. We've worked on businesses where the owners have been owners since we started the company. The geographic concentration of three decades of work means that this isn't just a service area to us — it's the community we're part of. That's not marketing language. It's the literal description of what 30 years in one suburb produces.
Why we'll be in Mount Prospect for the next 30 years too
The same logic that kept us here for the first 30 years applies to the next 30. The local building stock knowledge compounds. The property manager relationships compound. The architectural-review experience compounds. The neighborhood and community embeddedness compounds. Every year we stay at the same Mount Prospect address makes us more valuable to the customers we serve, not less. There's no point at which the cumulative advantage of local tenure stops mattering. We're not going anywhere.
Get in touch with the same Mount Prospect contractor that opened in 1996
Same family. Same Mount Prospect address. Same Illinois Roofing Unlimited License #104.010248. Same standards. Three decades of cedar shake, slate, copper, asphalt, modified bitumen, TPO, and EPDM work across Cook, DuPage, and Lake Counties. Read the full anniversary story on our 30 years page, or call (847) 312-2727 for an assessment of your home or commercial building. Mówimy po polsku. Founded May 1996 by Jan Koszyk.