Right off the Jane Addams Memorial Tollway near O’Hare Airport, the Colony Square shopping center looks like any other strip mall in northwest suburban Mount Prospect.
But Colony Square is as ethnically diverse as any neighborhood in Chicago, with almost every business owned by immigrants from many different countries.
The mall is anchored by A Thousand Tales and Grand Istanbul — the Canbolat family’s bustling, sprawling complex that includes a Turkish restaurant, banquet hall, bakery, cafe and grocery.
Bugra Canbolat, 24, started working in the grocery after school when he was a boy, and can point out all the neighbors in Colony Square.
“We have a Ukrainian dentist, a Palestinian smoke shop,” he says, looking around the L-shaped plaza at Elmhurst Road and Oakton Street. “There’s a Kazakh doner shop. A Serbian restaurant. A Turkish barber. A Turkish women’s boutique. An Indian restaurant. A pad Thai restaurant, and a Mexican-owned tax service, as well as an American.”
The American he’s referring to is Kevin MacNab, a native-born builder — who also happens to be a huge Donald Trump supporter.
Democrats dominate the Chicago area, which long has been a magnet for immigrants, and many of them are deeply offended at Trump’s immigration stance, including his recent statement that newcomers are “poisoning the blood of our country.” But Trump has his supporters here, and some are particularly fervent backers.
At Colony Square, at least, MacNab co-exists peacefully with his neighbors from abroad, while the immigrant entrepreneurs say they’re as averse to politics as MacNab is zealous about Trump.
Some people go by MacNab’s office and ask if it’s a Trump store. Trump campaign signs and a “BUILD THE WALL” banner cover all the front windows of what is actually an office for Synergy Contractors, which MacNab co-founded in 2006.
Kevin MacNab, 66, shows off his Trump shoes. MacNab’s business sits in the middle of a strip mall that has tenants from many different countries and nationalities.
Manuel Martinez/WBEZ
Inside the office, it’s more and more Trump. A model train track hangs from the drop ceiling — with a Trump train going ‘round and ‘round. There’s a poster of a bleeding Trump, moments after the assassination attempt in July. And a framed invitation to Trump’s inauguration in 2017, though MacNab says he did not go, because he refused to abide by the dress code.
MacNab, 66, says he wanted “TRUMP COUNTRY” to appear on the roadside sign for the strip mall in place of his company’s name, but Colony Square management rejected his request.
MacNab, who grew up in Park Ridge, says there’s a simple reason for his enthusiasm.
“I’m big on America,” he says. “I was born here, so I’m a big fan of America. It’s the greatest country in the world.”
Some customers from the Serbian restaurant next door confronted him about the Trump-themed decor and asked him to take down the signs, he says, but he shrugged it off.
“Some of the Democrats get a little deranged over it,” he says. “To me, you put up a Harris sign, I don’t really care. I don’t like her. But I don’t care.”
MacNab eagerly rattles off every conservative talking point heard on cable news and social media — about transgender youth and Jan. 6 and immigration.
And he has some ideas that go beyond what even Trump has espoused. For instance, MacNab says women should not be allowed to vote.
But he says he gets along great with his neighbors from abroad and has no problem with immigrants, as long as they have legal status in this country.
“But the thing is they need to assimilate to us — not us assimilate to them,” MacNab says.
It’s not so simple, though, for Canbolat and his sister Hati, whose family moved to the U.S. from Bursa, Turkey, more than 20 years ago. They’re proud to be a fusion of their old and new countries.
Hati Canbolat, 23, describes herself as a “Turkish-American Muslim.”
“We’re very grateful to be able to embrace our culture, our religion but still be American at the same time,” she says, wearing a headscarf during an interview at the family’s cafe and bakery.
The Canbolats are deeply proud, she says, to offer authentic Turkish cuisine to their clientele and treat customers as if they were guests at their home. And they’re proud too of serving people from many different ethnicties, not just their own.
“You’re living a whole different culture,” Hati Canbolat says. “It’s so different than if you go to any other strip mall, even two miles down the road. There’s a difference in the ambiance, the hospitality, the service — everything.”
The family businesses have grown to employ 60 people, many of them immigrants from Central Asian countries. The Grand Istanbul cafe is expanding into space that MacNab’s office used to occupy.
MacNab agreed to move to another part of the strip mall to make way for the expansion, and Synergy Contractors now sits between the Balkan Taste restaurant and a barber from Gaziantep, Turkey. The barber, Kadir Ciftci, accepts delivery of packages for MacNab when nobody is at the office of Synergy Contractors.
Ciftci and the Canbolat siblings say they get along well with MacNab — and Rascal, MacNab’s beloved therapy dog.
“Kevin is a real nice dude,” Bugra Canbolat says. “He has his beliefs. That’s cool, that’s OK. He’s friendly with us. He’s respectful. It doesn’t affect our business in any negative way. It doesn’t affect our lives in any negative ways.”
Bugra and Hati Canbolat say they feel that politics is dividing the country deeply, and they don’t want to add to the noise — or alienate any potential customers.
“Why do I need to go ahead and bash this person for their beliefs instead of trying to bring us together?” Bugra Canbolat says. “We can enjoy a cup of coffee together. We can enjoy a cup of tea together. There has to be something that we have, something similar between each other.
“At the end of the day, we’re just focused on our family, our business and growing our community. That’s the only thing we should be looking to do.”
Hati says all the political turbulence in the time she’s lived in this country makes her think of an old Turkish song. She translates the meaning into English.
“If this world was ours, we would live with peace, with respect, with kindness — and us trying to do that within our own little world here,” she says.
Dan Mihalopoulos is a reporter on WBEZ’s Government & Politics Team.