Innovations                                                                

New partnerships

Communities building the future by rebuilding the past

Photo courtesy of Steve Mundell/P.R.I.D.E. in Paxton Inc. Paxton, a city of 4,300 in Ford County, does not have a mall. The city still has a daily newspaper, two drug stores, two hardware stores and three banks among its businesses downtown. The owners of the building on the right will use the Main Street program to return the facade to its original appearance.

Sinclair Lewis said in the prologue to Main Street, "This is America. ... Main Street is the climax of civilization." For many people the harsh edges of Lewis' view of small-town America have softened over three-quarters of a century to evoke a memory of prosperity, innocence and safety. Pre-mall, pre-Walmart downtowns were the place to be. However, the reality of malls and behemoth discount stores has closed many a storefront on Main Street Illinois.

Nevertheless, there are those who believe the economic health of a community's present and future is tied to its past. The Illinois Main Street program, administered by the lieutenant governor's office, offers historic preservationists some tools, including a staff architect, to save downtown historic areas.

The 2-year-old state version of the national program to enliven communities' main streets is showing some results. Judy Eckel, the manager of Danville's program, says that since giving the eight-block area of downtown a fresh look, the rate of street-level vacancy has dropped from 25 percent to 3 percent. She says what is working in her city is the clustering of specialty small businesses like a virtual reality golf center and a mini-mall with a tin worker, craft shop and art gallery that took up part of the space left by an old Sears department store.

A reverse barn-raising Rock Island takes
unified approach to economic development

The area residents say it's like a "barn-raising in reverse." Every spring for the past five years volunteers, 35 to 50 of them, converge on a chosen house in an area of Rock Island called the Broadway Historic Area adjacent to the riverfront downtown. The group removes synthetic siding that has been added to the 19th-century houses. They call it "the great unveiling" because underneath the deteriorating shell they find an elegant house waiting to be restored to its original grandeur. These houses built by the rich in Rock Island's early days of prosperity from lumber and railroads then become single-family homes. With each renovation the neighborhood becomes one families want to move to rather than from.

Karen Williams, a local preservationist, says she and other residents began building the neighborhood by creating an atmosphere where renovation happens. Now, she says, even people who don't live in the area see the value in restoring older homes.

Helping to stabilize and revitalize older neighborhoods close to the business district is just one part of the plan of Rock Island Renaissance, an economic development group working to restore the city's downtown to an active business, arts and entertainment center. The development group fostered nearly $50 million in new development projects from 1991 to 1994 using local funds from private individuals, corporations and foundations and matching grants from the city.

John Kindschuh, vice president of planning for Augustana College in Rock Island, says the city has "truly seen a rebirth" from a low economic point in the 1980s when three major agricultural-based industries closed and 3,600 homes were for sale at one time.

Dan Carmody, executive director of Renaissance Rock Island, believes the success is due to the grass-roots support for getting economic value out of older neighborhoods and business districts.

from presidents day Springfield by John Knoepfle this gray afternoon we walk bricked streets in the lincoln home area persistent chiming the light breeze troubling the frost bound hardwoods 1860s houses all painted up now it was not so in the 1970s old paint peelers then and becky had her first floor apartment and good popcorn parties exhalations of cigarette smoke I remember standing on her porch looking north and the lincoln home there a voice muted in the darkness becky had her tall windows hung with bedsheets she was a clever seamstress this was before the park service reclaimed the old homes and where becky lived this is headquarters for a congressman now John Knoepfle, professor emeritus of English at the University of Illinois at Springfield, is the winner of the first Illinois Literary Heritage Award (see page 34).

4/July 1995/Illinois Issues