Trolley tour celebrates women business leaders, local commerce in downtown Highland Park

In downtown Highland Park and its dozens of women-owned businesses, every night is ladies night.

But that female power was synthesized on Thursday, May 8, during the Women-Owned Business Whistle Stop Trolley Tour.

More than 60 participants enjoyed deals, demos, music and refreshments as they hopped on and hopped off trolleys to visit the 30-plus involved shops on and around Central Avenue.

The idea came from Sandy Saldano, owner of Therapeutic Kneads, 1779 Green Bay Road, who was inspired by her time enjoying hop-on-hop-off trolleys in San Francisco. She said the trolley tour was a unique and convenient format to celebrate the downtown’s women-owned businesses.

“It’s about coming together to try to help promote business in the downtown area, to support each other, to bring everyone together and collaborate on bringing more customers to downtown,” Saldano said.

She pitched the idea to the Downtown Highland Park Alliance, a group of local property owners that manages a pool of City-provided funds to support events and beautification in the business district, which got on board.

The event — which was also supported by the Highland Park Chamber of Commerce and Ripple Public Relations — was capped with an after-party at Atelier by elliestyled, where guests enjoyed refreshments, a raffle and more.

Highland Park Councilmember Yumi Ross — the city’s representative to the alliance — was in Chicago on Thursday afternoon but said she “hightailed it back” to Highland Park to attend the event.

“It’s just incredible how many women-owned businesses we have and I wanted to do everything I could to support this,” she told The Record. “I can’t describe how important it is to support our businesses, but it’s a special thing to support women-owned businesses.”

Ross said she was aware that many of the district’s businesses are women owned, but just how many is “extraordinary,” she said. While 32 women-owned businesses participated on May 8, more than 100 exist in downtown Highland Park. The powerful community was celebrated in 2023 when more than 60 women business leaders gathered for a photo at Wayfarer Theater.

Saldano is proud to be part of that community.

“It’s actually very empowering,” she said, “because a lot of the women have been in business for a long time; they’ve reengineered themselves so that they can continue in any economic environment and just the support and camaraderie is important because it can get kind of lonely running a business … It’s helping each other and the more you get to know their business, it just helps all of us.”

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