DeKALB | NIU students spend more than $153 million in DeKalb County each year, according to the DeKalb Chamber of Commerce.

Over the last eight months, several new restaurant chains have come to DeKalb such as Panda Express, Chipotle, KFC/Long John Silver’s, Starbucks and Potbelly Sandwich Works.

“Typical student behavior; They eat out a lot. Anytime they buy a burger or a drink, there is a tax on that,” said Paul Rasmussen, DeKalb economic development director. “The new restaurants that have opened in the last eight months are directly related to the student population.”

DeKalb also has two major bookstores and a Steve & Barry’s, an athletic store that only opens in towns with a large student population, Rasmussen said.

“You wouldn’t mistake DeKalb for Ann Arbor, and you certainly wouldn’t mistake it for Madison, which is also a state capital,” said associate economics professor Stephen Karlson.

“We don’t have the same resident population or well-to-do parents coming in.”

Unlike Bowling Green, which is much farther from cities like Toledo or Cleveland, DeKalb is the western-most suburb of Chicago, he said.

Suburbs like Geneva are simply residential communities where there is not much of an industry – though lots of places to shop – and there is a train that goes all the way into the city.

“At one point in time, [DeKalb] was the price point for all of barbed wire,” Karlson said, “We’re not making gliders to win the second World War, there’s not much of a market for jukeboxes anymore, and barbed wire’s gone elsewhere.”