Overview:
Real estate entrepreneur was a longtime BGA board member, contributor and civic advocate
Daniel Goodwin, a former teacher whose extraordinary success in real estate set the stage for civic leadership in the Chicago area, died Jan. 19. He was 80 years old.
Goodwin, the longtime chair of Oak Brook-based Inland Real Estate, was a former longtime board member of the Better Government Association, publisher of the Illinois Answers Project. He was a major donor to the BGA, and beginning in 2017, the BGA named the award bestowing its highest honor for Goodwin, the Daniel L. Goodwin Watchdog Award — a year after Goodwin himself was the honoree.
The 2016 BGA Watchdog Award citation noted Goodwin’s “lifetime contributions to business, economic development, philanthropy and civic engagement, as well as his passionate advocacy for responsible government reform in Illinois.”
A hallmark of Goodwin’s career-long commitment to public service was his transformative turn as chair of the DuPage Airport Authority. For a decade beginning in 2003, he worked to retire $26 million in debt and lead the airport to profitability. The DuPage Flight Center was named in Goodwin’s honor in 2016.
Goodwin’s biography tells an unlikely story of remarkable accomplishment. Raised in North Avondale, a graduate of Lane Tech High School and then a college now known as Northeastern Illinois University, he became an 8th grade science teacher. To earn money on the side, he and three fellow teachers began buying, rehabbing and flipping homes.
Over time this became Inland Realty Group, founded in 1968. Today, Inland is one of the largest commercial and residential property investors in the U.S. and, through its partnerships, a path toward wealth for thousands of investors.
Goodwin joined the BGA board of directors as it was nearing the end of a difficult period. His commitment as chair of the BGA’s finance committee under a vigorous new leader — the former television journalist Andy Shaw — helped lead the BGA from a low point of three full-time employees and a budget of around $300,000 to more than 20 full-time staff and a budget of $3 million in 2017.
At the height of his involvement with the BGA, Goodwin traveled from his office or home in the western suburbs to downtown Chicago more than 30 times a year for BGA meetings.
Goodwin was a trusted advisor to BGA President and CEO David Greising, offering counsel based on his business acumen and commitment to ethical, efficient and accountable government. Goodwin’s guidance, backed by Inland’s steadfast financial commitment, helped the BGA accelerate its growth trajectory.
“Dan always kept his entrepreneurial mindset, his optimism about the potential for good government and his real-world reckoning with why reform can be so difficult,” Greising said. “His commitment and vision, plus a twist of good humor, made him a real asset in the effort.”
Goodwin also was a proponent of fair and equitable housing, a conservationist, an advocate for disabled and disadvantaged young people and a supporter of higher education. He served for 20 years on the board of Benedictine University’s College of Business, which is now named for him.
His good-government work never stopped. In recent years Goodwin backed an effort, not yet successful, to pass a bill outlawing extortion by public officials in the state of Illinois.
Goodwin also was a founding supporter of a Martin Luther King Day breakfast in DuPage County, which drew hundreds to the Drury Lane in Oak Brook Terrace just days before his death from a respiratory ailment.
In addition to his wife, Carol, and two adult daughters, Goodwin is survived by the three other founding investors of Inland — all of whom remain active in the business.
Visitation for Goodwin will be held from 4 to 8 p.m., Friday, Feb. 2, at Knollcrest Funeral Home, 1500 S. Meyer Road, in Lombard. A funeral mass for Goodwin will be held at 11:30 a.m. the following day at St. Mary’s of Gostyn Church, 445 Prairie Ave., in Downers Grove. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital at www.stjude.org/give.
