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WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2007
OUTLOOK
The capital city towers to new heights
2008
THE STATE JOURNAL-REGISTER
Springfield, Illinois
PAGE
2A
OUTLOOK 2008
WEDNESDAY, NOV. 14, 2007 / THE STATE JOURNAL-REGISTER
INDEX
Clock tower at
Union Station
PAGES
PAGES
PAGES
3A-8A
9A-14A
15A-18A
PAGES
PAGES
PAGES
23A-27A
28A-30A
31A-36A
COMMUNITY PAGES
Communities look
to close digital divide
Springfield has its eye
on the Capitol complex
PAGE 19A
PAGE 22A
Chatham, Lincoln
PAGE 38A
Auburn, Jacksonville,
Pawnee
Taylorville
PAGE 42A
PAGE 40A
Petersburg
Sherman
Riverton
Rochester
PAGE 37A
PAGE 39A
PAGE 41A
PAGE 43A
A healthy outlook for our community
Springfield has long been
perceived as insulated from
the effects of a major
economic crisis because of
the stability of state government employment.
Economic development
officials agree that the ol’ gray
mare of government providing jobs for everybody just
ain’t what she used to be.
Despite that, the local economic engine chugs on with
development under way in all
sectors of the city — some of
which are expanding as major
thoroughfares are extended
and often-used arteries are
linked together, creating even
more favorable spots for busi-
ness and commerce to grow.
The credit crunch and subprime mortgage mess that
have hands wringing in several Western and coastal states?
It’s not much of a factor here,
despite how much we worry
that it might be.
This section looks at what
went on in major segments of
the economy in Springfield
and the surrounding area in
2007 and attempts to tell
what’s ahead in 2008.
The consensus is that we
have a stable, diverse economy ... and maybe aren’t as
dependent on government as
we thought.
— Chris Dettro
Clock tower photo by Rich Saal ● Section front photos by T.J. Salsman
The State Journal-Register
OUTLOOK 2008
R E A L E S TAT E
DEVELOPMENT
AND
PAGE
4A
REAL ESTATE AND DEVELOPMENT / OUTLOOK 2008
Area hasn’t
seen dramatic
drop in new
construction
By CHRIS DETTRO
STAFF WRITER
Home building in the Springfield
area has slowed as inventory has increased but not in all price ranges
and not to the extent that a lot of
people think.
“We’re in for a soft year, but not
dramatically soft,” said Dean Graven
of Brady Homes and second vice
president of the Springfield Area
Home Builders Association.
“Building permits are down but
not nearly what they are across the
nation,” he said. “We’re in single digits.”
Through September, the number
of building permits for single-family
residences in the Springfield area in
2007 totaled 141, compared to 176
during the same nine-month period
in 2006, Graven said. But the number
actually increased this September
“IN 2006, construction
costs went through the
ceiling because of fuel
prices. ... That has
stabilized somewhat, and
the price of lumber, which
was driven up after
Hurricane Katrina, has
started to come down.”
— DEAN GRAVEN,
SECOND VICE PRESIDENT
OF THE SPRINGFIELD AREA HOME
BUILDERS ASSOCIATION
from the same month a year ago, and
permits for duplexes and condominiums have increased year-to-year for
the first nine months — 31 in 2007
and 26 in 2006.
When all housing units are considered, the number of permits is down
only 29 in 2007 — from 204 last year
to 175 so far this year.
The estimated construction cost of
new homes approved through August was $24.8 million compared to
$31.9 million last year, according to
the Springfield Building & Zoning
Department.
“We’re seeing fewer spec houses
go up as the year progresses,”
Graven said. He also said the upper
end of the market has slowed down.
But he said there is a larger inventory of existing homes, and new construction is competing against newer,
one-owner homes in the sales arena.
“There’s still activity out there, and
we’re competing for the first time in
several years with 1- to 5-year-old
homes out on the market,” he said.
“That is affecting new construction
more so than having a lot of spec
homes out there.”
Graven admits that 2007 “is not
going to be a year where we’re going
to see improved sales.”
But he expects 2008 to be at least
as good as 2007, if not better.
“In 2006, construction costs went
through the ceiling because of fuel
prices,” he said.
That big jump in oil prices affected
not only transportation costs, but
everything that required the use of a
petroleum-based product — everything from vinyl siding to drywall,
which must be heated in the production process.
“That has stabilized somewhat,
and the price of lumber, which was
driven up after Hurricane Katrina,
has started to come down,” he said.
He also foresees another possible
drop in the prime interest rate by the
end of the year.
National economists who spoke at
a recent conference sponsored by the
National Association of Home
Builders predicted the real estate and
home building market still hasn’t hit
bottom.
The economists also admitted surprise at how bad the national housing downturn has become, and all
said that making forecasts of a recovery is difficult because of the problems in the credit markets.
Graven said Springfield doesn’t
have many of the problems other
areas of the country are saddled
with, such as double-digit appreciation in home prices — and the accompanying double-digit drops.
“We usually have 2 percent to 3
percent appreciation, and might have
5 percent in a good year,” he said.
Purchase this photo at www.sj-r.com/reprints
Jonathan Kirshner/The State Journal-Register
The renovated marquee above Walch Studio of Stained Glass — restored as part of the Old South Town redevelopment project — lights up
South Grand Avenue.
South Grand plans go south
Revitalization effort grinds to halt amid financing, acquisition issues
By CHRIS DETTRO
“IT’S UNFORTUNATE
STAFF WRITER
An ambitious plan to revitalize the area
around South Grand Avenue East has
been bogged down while officials decide
how they want to proceed.
Mike Suhadolnik, manager of CX Construction of Central Illinois, said in May
that he believed agreements between CX
Construction and area labor unions, effectively ending a longstanding rivalry between unions and one of the area’s largest
non-union firms, could help revive the
ambitious plan, which has been around in
because that is one of the two
main arteries from the east
going into town.”
— MIKE SUHADOLNIK, MANAGER OF
CX CONSTRUCTION OF CENTRAL ILLINOIS
some form for several years.
Much of the proposal centered on
South Grand Avenue from 11th Street to
Interstate 55, though even a hint of the
plan drew more than two dozen residents
to a meeting in August 2006 concerned
with possible loss of their homes.
Suhadolnik said the Illinois Housing
Development Authority was to “be the
backbone of the project.”
“But you have to have extensive community involvement and have everybody on
board, or you don’t get the deal,” he said.
He said 160 of the 312 lots in the proposed revitalization area are vacant.
“It wouldn’t take much to get started and
not disturb anything,” he said. “It’s unfortunate because that is one of the two main
arteries from the east going into town.”
But the project awaits any kind of
movement.
“There are numerous issues, such as financing and land acquisition, that have to
be resolved for that to go forward,” said
Mike Farmer, director of the city Office of
Planning and Economic Development.
“We’re anxious to do something,” he
said. “The city is interested in seeing
something happen.”
Suhadolnik said he’s optimistic something eventually will happen.
“Given the opportunity, I’ll take the bull
by the horns and make it happen,” he
said.
Housing ‘crisis’ seems mild in Springfield
By CHRIS DETTRO
STAFF WRITER
The national housing crisis? If you’ve
been living in Springfield and many other
central Illinois cities, you might be wondering what all the fuss is about.
Although area home sales dropped 16
percent in September compared to a year
earlier, they are down a more modest 4.5
percent for the year, according to figures
from the Capital Area Association of Realtors.
“For the most part, they’re tracking
pretty good locally,” said Phil Chiles of
Aspen Real Estate, president of the CAAR.
“For the year, we’re off over last year, but
we are within a couple of percentage
points (2.3 percent) of 2005, which was a
record year.
“To put it in perspective, this the thirdbest year we’ve ever had,” he said.
“Certainly, I would much rather be reporting that we had positive growth in
September. But having said that, it is important to point out that our overall market trends this year have been positive.
“In comparison to the balance of this
year, our September numbers are a bit of
an anomaly,” said Chiles.
Single-family home sales of 3,176 for
2007 compared to 3,327 for January
through September last year and 3,252 for
that period in 2005.
The median sale price of a home in
September also was down from a year
ago, but the median sale price for the
year, $102,000, was up 2.9 percent.
The local figures include Sangamon,
Menard, Morgan and Christian counties
and a portion of Macoupin County.
Sales in the Springfield area compare
favorably with statewide figures. The Illinois Association of Realtors said
statewide sales were down nearly 23 percent in September, compared to September last year, and sales for the year are
down 15.4 percent.
The statewide median sale price in September of $200,000 was up 1.8 percent
from a year ago.
The Midwest
showed a 7 percent
drop from August
and a 16.2 percent
decline from a year
ago. The median
price in the Midwest of $170,700
was up 1.4 percent
from September
2006.
Chiles said the
big hits in home
prices in areas
along the nation’s
coasts were preceded by huge increases every year.
“We don’t see
those kinds of increases, so we don’t
see those kinds of
hits,” he said.
Nor do the record number of foreclosures on a national
level factor much into the local
real estate scene.
“We’re not seeing any increase in foreclosures over
what’s typical,” Chiles said.
“But I don’t know whether
that will change.”
He estimated that subprime loans, which have
had such a devastating affect
on the national market, account for less than 5 percent
of the total Springfield loan
market.
“It doesn’t seem to have affected our sales.”
Real estate companies in
the Springfield area had
1,941 listings in late October and 6.2
months worth of inventory — within a 10year high for the association. That means
if no new homes were listed, it
would take 4.7 months to
sell all existing listings
at the current sales
rate.
Even that compares favorably with
the national inventory supply of 10.5
months.
“Sellers may have to be more realistic
with their prices and improve the condition of their properties” to reduce inventory, Chiles said. “If you overprice a house,
it’s going to sit because there are too
many others to choose from.”
Houses in the $300,000-and-up range
have been on the market the longest, he
said, with there being a double-digit
months supply of inventory in that range.
Homes in the $150,000 to $175,000
range on the west side of Springfield are in demand.
But interest rates are one of
the biggest determining factors
as far as inventory, he said.
“I think next year is going
to be a good year,” he said.
“I’m encouraged by interest
rates.”
New construction inventory
is high. Building permits within the city are down from
what they were a year ago.
But Chiles thinks the homebuilding market is self-correcting.
“It’s going to even out,” he said.
“By midsummer, that market
could pick back up again.”
“If you’re a buyer, you should
be looking at houses,” Chiles
said. “Interest rates are low (6
to 6.5 percent), there’s a large
inventory, and it’s not hard to
get a loan here.”
Could anything alter his
upbeat forecast on housing?
“If the unemployment
rate were to jump or interest rates went up suddenly,” Chiles said. “The
biggest roadblock is psychological.”
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OUTLOOK 2008 / REAL ESTATE AND DEVELOPMENT
PAGE
5A
Justin L. Fowler/The State Journal-Register
City Water, Light and Power’s new 200-megawatt generator — which still is under construction — can be seen at left.
Generator to be up and running by 2010
Will replace
PROJECT STATUS
two Lakeside Engineering phase
90% complete
units that must Procurement phase
90% complete
shut down
The most recent electric rate increase was Oct. 1. The last one
will occur April 1.
KBV — a consortium of companies of Omaha, Neb.-based Kiewit
Industrial and Kansas City-based
Black and Veatch — is the general
contractor.
The total budget for the new
plant is $541.7 million, which includes debt service, underwriters,
bond insurance and issuing the
bonds. It also includes $35 million
in state grants.
The city has spent $26.6 million
of the project’s $43.6 million contingency fund.
About $16.4 million was spent
because the project did not start
on time.
The rest was spent on beefed-up
pollution-control measures to reduce emissions of nitrous oxide,
sulfur dioxide, mercury and particulate matter from the new plant.
Those were required under the
terms of the city’s agreement with
the Sierra Club to avoid a legal
challenge to the plant.
While costly upfront, CWLP
says the environmental upgrade
will save almost $39 million over
30 years because it eliminates the
need for some emissions credits,
which CWLP will be able to sell to
other utilities.
The Sierra Club deal calls for
the city to buy wind power and reduce its emissions of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, mercury and
other pollutants below what current law requires. The agreement
also requires CWLP to improve
the efficiency of its existing generators and bolster conservation
programs.
The plant will burn Illinois coal.
The city will continue to get its
coal from the Viper Mine near
Williamsville.
CWLP’s two Lakeside units,
which generate about 75
megawatts of electricity, must be
retired in 2010 because of their
age, costs and environmental considerations.
The three units at the Dallman
power station generate about 360
megawatts.
CWLP also has two oil-fueled
turbines and one natural-gas turbine separate from its five coalburning generators on Lake
Springfield.
Construction phase
By CHRIS WETTERICH
STAFF WRITER
The skyline around Lake
Springfield has already changed,
but the city’s new 200-megawatt
electric generator is still about two
years away from completion.
Ground was broken Dec. 1,
2006. Since then, the most noticeable difference has been a 440foot chimney tower, which will
eventually release the plant’s air
emissions, and the boiler building,
which will eventually top 215 feet
tall.
Brian Fitzgerald, project manager for City Water, Light and
Power, said the generator’s “construction is on track” to be online
by Jan. 11, 2010. Dry weather during the summer helped the utility
keep to its timetable, he said.
Once the city takes ownership
of the plant, the contractor will
have six months to tinker with the
plant.
The boiler will be ignited using
natural gas in the summer of 2009,
with coal being introduced to it
that September. The generator
will be synchronized to the electric
grid in October 2009.
The city has spent $370 million
on the plant so far, Fitzgerald said.
At the peak construction time next
spring, there will be as many as
700 workers on the project. Construction workers are on site six
days a week.
The new power plant will be the
first addition to CWLP since the
Dallman 3 unit was built nearly 30
years ago.
Upon activation of the new Dallman 4 generator, the two remaining units at the Lakeside Power
Station will be deactivated. CWLP
has estimated the city will not
have to build another generator
for 30 years.
The city is paying for the plant
25% complete
Total project
57% complete
MATERIALS USED
cubic yards of concrete
22,000
tons of structural steel
3,000
yards of earth moved
120,000
ELECTRICITY USE
2006
1,855,429 mwh*
2005
1,931,072 mwh
2004
1,830,271 mwh
2003
1,829,973 mwh
2002
1,890,079 mwh
* mwh = megawatthours
Source: City Water, Light and Power
by issuing $507 million in bonds
backed by a series of five electric
rate increases that eventually will
total 34.1 percent.
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cessitating the outside purchase of
power. CWLP officials believe it is
better for customers to build its
own generator than buy power on
the open market.
When Dallman units 1 through
3 were constructed in 1968, 1972
and 1978, electric rates increased
by 53 percent.
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purchases of power from other
utilities — to ensure the integrity
of the power grid.
CWLP’s power needs to grow
by about 2 percent a year.
Without the new Dallman unit,
CWLP would be unable to provide
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Those can generate about 165
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Power usage peaks during the
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6A
Q5 initiative already producing results
By CHRIS DETTRO
STAFF WRITER
A new public-private effort
billed as a better way at approaching economic development is
ahead of its job-creation and retention goal after nine months of a
five-year plan.
The Quantum Growth Partnership, called Q5, is an initiative of
The Greater Springfield Chamber
of Commerce, local government,
labor and business leaders.
Among the Q5 objectives are the
retention or creation of 4,500 jobs,
adding $2.6 billion in wealth to the
Sangamon County economy, by
2012.
“Local leaders recognized in
2006 that we needed to do some-
thing different in economic development because of changes in the
state and the opportunities we
weren’t capturing,” said Brad
Warren, executive director of the
Greater Springfield Chamber of
Commerce.
“This is one of the most important realignments of leadership in
decades.”
Q5 has established measurable
goals to retain and create jobs,
redirect development policy, improve minority participation, develop education and work-force
excellence and identify and create
emerging economic opportunities.
The initiative, which kicked off
in January, operates on $5.2 million in pledges from 125 public
and private investors, with
fundraising completed in March. It
has a $1.1 million budget for 2007.
“The things we can measure,
we’re pretty excited about the results,” Warren said of the first nine
months of the initiative.
“We realized from the beginning we were up against some
tough challenges, but those who
have chosen to partner with us are
still behind us,” he said. “We expect to see more in 2008 than in
2007.”
Warren said that to transform
the local economy, leaders first
had to change the way they think
about it.
“We are now more collaborative, there are more diverse opinions and we hope we make better
decisions because of that diversi-
ty,” he said. “We’re all working on
one plan.”
Q5’s recently released thirdquarter report to investors highlighted M.J. Kellner Foodservice’s
groundbreaking for an $8.7 million, 90,000-square-foot corporate
headquarters and food distribution center in the Interstate 72
Business Park. When the facility is
completed in summer 2008 Kellner expects to employ 10 people,
up from its current 70 employees.
“That is an important local retention and job expansion project,” Warren said. “That’s what
this program is all about.”
A task force was organized to
evaluate Springfield’s infrastructure needs and determined that
$38 million should be spent annu-
ally on roads, sewers, bridges and
transit needs.
A Q5 subcommittee also is
working with people in the development community and public officials to revise the current land
subdivision ordinance to make it
less complicated.
“The public and private sector
are finding new agreement on
how to share costs in development,” Warren said. “By the first
quarter of 2008, we’ll have a clear
picture of where we want to be
when we are done.”
Q5 also is joining with the
Springfield Project, a communitybased organization, to arrive at a
new focus on diversity, he said.
The University of Illinois at
Springfield and Q5 are planning to
provide a local measure of economic trends similar to a
statewide index compiled at the
University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign. The report, to be released in early 2008, will measure
local economic trends and provide
the capacity for forecasting two to
24 months ahead.
Earlier this year, a report by a
Texas site-selection and consulting firm identified health care,
warehouse operations and distribution centers as industries most
likely to create jobs in the Springfield market in coming years.
But the report also found a
shortage of 100- to 500-acre sites
in Sangamon County readily available for distribution or warehouse
operations.
Water use
Below is a list noting how many millions
of gallons of water per day flowed from
City Water, Light and Power in the past
five years:
2006
22.14 million
2005
22.94 million
2004
21.22 million
2003
21.34 million
2002
21.73 million
Source: City Water, Light and Power
A fisherman casts his line into
Lake Springfield from a dock
that used to float but instead
rests on rocks because of the
low water level.
Forty-year-old idea for second lake still floating around
By CHRIS WETTERICH
STAFF WRITER
GENERATIONS OF
City Water, Light and Power expects
the Illinois Environmental Protection
Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to hold a public hearing late this
year or early next year on its request for
permission to build a second lake to supplement Lake Springfield.
The two agencies have already been
collecting public comments on the city’s
plans for a second lake. Officials do not
expect to ask the city council for a vote
before 2008. If the permit is issued, CWLP
officials have said it will be up to aldermen as to whether the lake is built or another option is chosen.
Progress on the lake, which was proposed about four decades ago, continues
to be slow. The administration of Mayor
Tim Davlin has predicted a decision
would be made on it every year since
2005.
Generations of Springfield politicians
and CWLP officials have said the city
needs a second water supply as protection
in the event of an 18-month-long drought,
something that is expected to occur once
Springfield politicians and
CWLP officials have said
the city needs a second water
supply as protection in the
event of an 18-month-long
drought, something that is
expected to occur once every
100 years.
every 100 years.
Chatham recently decided to get its
water from nearby aquifers, which will
free up 2 million gallons per day that
Springfield has committed to the suburb,
although CWLP officials said Chatham’s
withdrawal does not preclude the need for
a second water source.
CWLP general manager Todd Renfrow
has said he will present all options regarding a second Springfield water supply —
Hunter Lake, tapping into aquifers or
doing nothing — to the city council once
the permit for the second lake is received.
CWLP has estimated building the new
lake will require a 72.3 percent increase in
water rates. Its capital cost is projected to
be about $89 million.
By 2025, the second water supply
should provide 10 million to 12 million
gallons a day to meet total demand of 38.8
mgd during such a drought, according to
the utility. That includes residential consumption and the water needed to run the
Lake Springfield power plants.
Lake Springfield would yield 29.6 mgd,
leaving a 9.2 mgd deficit. A 100-year
drought would add 3.1 mgd to the demand over the base-level demand of 35.7
mgd, according to the city. Hunter Lake,
as proposed, could provide 21.3 million
gallons of water per day.
But a local group, Citizens for Sensible
Water Use, believes CWLP’s figures are
wrong. CSWU says the utility plan does
not provide for conservation of water that
would mitigate the need for another water
source.
The group takes issue with CWLP’s
projected need of an extra 3.1 mgd during
a drought, which Citizens for Sensible
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Water Use believes will be wasted as people water their lawns and fill swimming
pools.
CWLP should consider a tiered-rate
structure that charges more as consumption increases for such activities as swimming pools and lawn watering, the group
says.
The new power plant’s capability to dispose of fly ash without water, coupled
with Chatham’s decision, also means
Springfield will be using less than it would
have, closing the gap on CWLP’s waterdemand figures, Citizens for Sensible
Water Use said. It believes the water demand numbers have been overestimated
anyway.
The opponents noted a 1991 CWLP
study that estimated that by 2000, the city
would have to serve 167,500 people and
require an average of 22.3 mgd. The actual numbers for 2000 were 135,700 people
and water demand of 20.8 mgd, they said.
According to CWLP’s Web site, the utility today provides water to 152,000 people
with usage averaging 21 to 22 mgd. The
most water ever treated in a day was 39.7
mgd in July 1999.
The leading alternative for a second
water source — a series of Sangamon
River Valley wells — would cost $45.7 million and necessitate a 45.9 percent rate increase, the documents say. That cost assumes the Hunter Lake land could be sold
for $21.5 million.
According to the city, the annual operating cost of the wells would be nearly
seven times that of Hunter Lake —
$700,000 compared with $110,000. What’s
more, the wells would provide only about
half the water — 11.5 mgd compared with
21.3 million mgd for the lake.
Even if Hunter Lake gets the go-ahead
from the agencies, CWLP still must acquire 667 acres, or about 9 percent of the
total needed, and solve the problem of
sewage discharge from Divernon, Pawnee
and Virden into streams that would feed
the lake’s watershed.
CWLP’s preference is to build sewer
lines to divert wastewater to the Springfield Metro Sanitary District, which would
have the added bonus of getting residents
around Lake Springfield off of septic systems, Renfrow said.
However, agreements would have to be
reached with the three communities on
how to pay for the new lines.
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OUTLOOK 2008 / REAL ESTATE AND DEVELOPMENT
PAGE
7A
Retailers keep pace
with sprawl but also
aim to fill gaps in city
By CHRIS DETTRO
STAFF WRITER
Don O’Connor, branch manager of Connor Co. plumbing wholesale distribution center, stands inside the company’s
new building at Ninth Street and South Grand Avenue.
Outside the box
Businesses other than nationwide outlets growing, too
By CHRIS DETTRO
STAFF WRITER
Wal-Mart. Menards. H.D.
Smith. Legacy Pointe. Woodside
Place.
Those projects keep coming
up in conversations with Springfield and Sangamon County officials concerned with planning and economic development.
But there are other projects
— some on the way and others
already completed — cited as
reasons for optimism within the
Springfield business community.
M.J. Kellner Co. broke ground
in October on an $8.7 million
corporate headquarters and
food-distribution center at
Wabash Avenue and Interstate 72, highlighting what economic planners say is one of the
city’s biggest needs — an industrial park to lure potential employers.
M.J. Kellner, which distributes
products to food-service companies in a seven-state region, expects to move by midsummer
2008 to the new facility from two
buildings on the south side of
Springfield. The company has
about 70 employees, and that
number is likely to increase
when the facility is completed.
“That’s an important project
because we’ve lost some people
in that industry,” said Norm
Sims, executive director of
the Springfield-Sangamon County Regional Planning Commission.
M.J. Kellner, founded in 1920,
was still the newest of local foodservice distribution companies
until Robert’s Foods Inc., founded in 1916, and Bunn Capitol Co.,
founded in the 1830s, were sold
to SYSCO Corp.
SYSCO purchased Robert’s
Foods in 2004 and Bunn Capitol
in 2006 and relocated both operations to Lincoln.
The Kellner project will leave
about 50 of the original 80 acres
in the Interstate 72 Business Park
started five years ago, said Steve
Zaubi, who with two other
Springfield developers, Charles
Who has the
biggest box
in Springfield?
WAL-MART
204,000 sq. ft.
MEIJER
181,238 sq. ft.
JC PENNEY
180,000 sq. ft.
MENARDS NORTH
166,160 sq. ft.
SAM’S CLUB
140,000 sq. ft.
Robbins and Art Seppi, are partners in the park.
Another important project was
completed in August, adding
three or four new jobs and had
the bonus effect of improving the
looks of
what had become a distressed
corner.
A farm machinery manufacturer, retailer, state offices and a
recycling
center all have been
located at the southeast corner of Ninth
Street and South Grand Avenue
at one time or another. The site
had been vacant since a recycling center shut down several
years ago.
But this summer, Connor Co.,
a Peoria-based plumbing supply
wholesaler, has moved its distribution center to the property.
The finished facility includes
100,000 square feet of warehouse
space and 10,000 square feet of
showroom and office space.
Between 10 and 15 semis per
day haul products in and out of
the facility, using South Grand
Avenue and Sixth Street as the
primary access routes. The
Springfield facility serves parts
of central and southern Illinois.
The site is within a city enterprise zone that qualified Connor
Co. for property tax abatements
on improvements for five years
and a sales-tax break on locally
purchased materials.
push toward the south
as gateways are being
opened up.”
— MIKE FARMER, DIRECTOR
OF SPRINGFIELD’S OFFICE OF
PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT
Gander Mountain originally
proposed a 57,000-square-foot
store at Veterans Parkway and Interstate 72, just north of Meijer.
But before the Springfield City
Council voted on a variance for
the project, the retailer’s development company said it wanted to
explore variances that would
change the scope or details of the
plan.
The Springfield store was to be
a little smaller than the traditional
Gander Mountain outlet but would
carry the full line of camping,
hunting, fishing, boating, apparel
and other outdoor equipment.
Gander Mountain has four other
Illinois stores.
It has been the plan all along to
develop 300-acre Legacy Pointe as
work on the MacArthur extension
progresses. It eventually will include a big-box anchor, upscale retail shops, residential areas, restaurants, fountains and bike paths.
The center would be at the
south end of the extension between Wabash Avenue and Interstate 72, and would have access
from a new I-72 interchange.
The International Council of
Shopping Centers describes the
lifestyle center as an “open air,”
pedestrian-friendly environment
that combines traditional retail,
commercial and upscale shops
with residential development,
recreation and entertainment.
Steve Luker, a managing partner of Legacy Pointe Development
Co., said there are similar developments in Bloomington, Peoria and
Champaign.
The developers have proposed
creation of a business district and
a 1 percent sales tax that would be
charged only within the district.
The money would go toward an
estimated $18 million in infrastructure improvements.
Luker said the goal still is to
complete the first phase when the
MacArthur extension is completed
in late 2009 or early 2010.
“It’s a different thought process
altogether on retail development,”
Farmer said of Legacy Pointe. He
envisions upscale stores that will
keep a segment of shoppers in
Springfield “instead of having to
traipse off to St. Louis or Chicago.”
Farmer sees 2008 as a year
where Springfield will be “catching our breath” in most areas of
development.
“I’m sensing a push toward the
south as gateways are being
opened up,” he said.
He sees further strip development along Koke Mill Road and
Iles Avenue as the population
edges westward.
“Retail follows rooftops,” he
said.
Farmer also expects to see activity this year and next at Jefferson
Crossing, the proposed 40-acre development at Jefferson Street and
Veterans Parkway.
Developers of the proposed
shopping mall, park and lake are
asking the city for tax breaks
through creation of a tax increment financing district that would
help pave the way for $8.6 million
worth of improvements to the site.
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Company officials cited the
central location and the ability to
consolidate operations as key
factors in deciding to build at
Ninth and South Grand.
Connor has operated from a
group of five buildings at
300 North St. for 24
years.
The Connor
project is just a
block west of the
South Town restoration project at 11th
Street and South Grand.
But a number of vacant or
neglected buildings
remain in the
area, said
city economic-development director Mike
Farmer.
But Farmer sees
overall development
in Springfield moving
forward, although 2008
may be a period when the
city catches its breath.
“This is a good time for
Springfield,” Farmer said.
“We’re fortunate to have a good,
diversified economic base.”
Sims sees vacancies being
filled in on North Dirksen Parkway and Sangamon Avenue on
the north and South Dirksen
Parkway on the south on the
south.
Development tends to occur
around hubs, Sims said, and
there could be several along
MacArthur Boulevard when the
extension to Interstate 72 is completed.
He said hubs are likely to develop at MacArthur and I-72
and at MacArthur and Wabash
Avenue.
“Another hub is needed at
South Grand and MacArthur,” he
said. “If that would happen, it
would create some real opportunities for that area to redevelop.”
Sims said it is better to see development and new projects
spread across the city rather than
concentrated in one area.
“That eases the chances of
gridlock,” he said.
Retail development, particularly
on the edge of Springfield, is continuing unabated into 2008, and although only a couple of “big box”
projects are under way, that doesn’t mean there won’t be others
forthcoming.
Meanwhile, retail developers
will be filling gaps in the retail
landscape and building smaller
strip-center and “lifestyle” projects.
Major roadwork has begun in
conjunction with a new Wal-Mart
supercenter on South Sixth Street
at Hazel Dell Road, and a new intersection at Chatham Road and
Recreation Drive is part of the
Woodside Place development that
will be anchored by a Menards superstore next year.
Wal-Mart plans to occupy about
30 acres of the 41-acre development with the remainder available
for other commercial development. The Wal-Mart site, along
with the proposed Lincolnwood
project immediately to the north,
will rival Parkway Pointe in size
when it is done.
Wal-Mart is scheduled for completion in late summer or early fall
of 2008.
An extension of Prairie Crossing
Drive, on the south side of the
Menards site in Woodside Place,
opened last month, linking Veterans Parkway and Chatham Road.
State transportation officials estimate 21,000 vehicles a day use
Veterans Parkway on the west
side of the Prairie Crossing shopping development and that about
8,500 use Chatham Road on the
east side.
A traffic study released just before the start of work nearly a year
ago estimated the 8,500 vehicles a
day that travel Chatham Road
daily south of Interstate 72 will increase by more than 17,000 within
two decades.
Menards plans to close its first
Springfield store on Veterans
Parkway once the superstore is
completed. The home improvement chain opened its first Springfield superstore on North Dirksen
Parkway in 2006.
Like Menards, Wal-Mart has another superstore in Springfield on
North Dirksen Parkway. That
store opened in 2001.
Woodside Place developer Bob
Barker has said he is working with
other potential tenants to join
Menards, including a hotel.
Mike Farmer, director of the
city’s Office of Planning and Development, also thinks extending
MacArthur Boulevard two miles to
the south and linking it with Interstate 72 will be a boon for retail
development. That project is
scheduled for completion by the
end of 2009.
One major project, the Legacy
Pointe retail and residential
“lifestyle center,” already is
planned in conjunction with the
MacArthur extension.
Farmer said Springfield now is
“being looked at by a different retail mix than ever before.”
As larger markets become builtout, retailers who may not previously have considered Springfield
are now examining mid-size markets as sites for new outlets.
Case in point is Gander Mountain, a Minnesota-based outdoor
equipment retailer that has postponed its plans to start construction on a store at Prairie Crossing
this year and will wait until at least
next year, according to city officials.
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OUTLOOK 2008
T R A N S P O RTAT I O N
PAGE
10A
TRANSPORTATION / OUTLOOK 2008
Capitol Avenue
promenade work
may start in spring
Street
smarts
New roads
will open
new gateways
into the city
By CHRIS DETTRO
By CHRIS DETTRO
STAFF WRITER
In addition to connecting the
dots and creating traffic links between other major streets, several
in-progress road and infrastructure projects promise to open up
new areas for development and
provide new gateways into the
city.
Major roadwork has started
south of Springfield to accommodate a new Wal-Mart supercenter,
including two new intersections
on Sixth Street north of Interstate
72 and an extension of 11th Street
that will complete a link between
Stevenson Drive and the University of Illinois at Springfield.
One of Springfield’s largest
road projects in quite some time
also is under way.
MacArthur Boulevard will be
extended southward two miles and
widened to six lanes, which will
link the road to Interstate 72. The
$22.5 million project also includes
the relocation of Recreation Drive
to an interchange just south of the
interstate, and four new bridges
will be built, including one over the
Norfolk Southern railroad.
When the work is done in the
next couple of years, the
MacArthur extension also will create another link between Wabash
Avenue and I-72.
The Interurban Trail bike path
will be taken over the railroad and
beneath the interstate to continue
an uninterrupted route to
Chatham. The future of the trail
was a key point in early negotiations for the project.
Halverson Construction Co. of
Springfield won the contract. The
work began in May and should be
completed by the end of 2009.
Last month, the extension of
Prairie Crossing Drive opened,
creating an east-west connection
between Chatham Road and Veterans Parkway through the Prairie
Crossing commercial and retail
development.
The project is part of the Woodside Place development that includes the city’s second Menards
megastore, expected to go up in
2008.
The Illinois Department of
Transportation estimates the average 8,500 vehicles a day that travel
Chatham Road south of I-72 will
increase to more than 25,000 a day
within 20 years.
Also in the works, but farther
away from completion, is a major
redesign of the Dirksen ParkwayClear Lake Avenue intersection.
IDOT recently completed demolition of the old Parkview Motel,
3121 Clear Lake Ave., to pave the
way for the $6 million project.
Work probably won’t begin
until the summer of 2009 at the
earliest because additional rightsof-way are required.
When it is completed, the intersection will be wider, have new
turn lanes and medians will be reconfigured. According to IDOT,
20,000 vehicles a day pass through
“IT WILL BE part of a
STAFF WRITER
The MacArthur Boulevard extention to Interstate 72 — shown from above earlier this
month — is beginning to take shape but isn’t expected to be completed until late 2009.
Plenty of cars
on those roads
Breakdown of vehicle registration in
Sangamon County from www.cyberdriveillinois.com, the Web site of the
Illinois Secretary of State:
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
209,673
205,983
184,526
195,423
201,471
198,320
the intersection.
Completion of the major road
and infrastructure improvements
prior to opening the city’s second
Wal-Mart supercenter store at
Sixth Street and Hazel Dell Road
was a key requirement for the 41acre project winning city council
approval.
The project is targeted for completion in late summer or early fall
of 2008.
Norm Sims, executive director
of the Springfield-Sangamon
County Regional Planning Commission, said the road improvements “will significantly change
that area.”
“It could take some of the pressure off the west side,” Sims said,
and alleviate some traffic congestion.
When it is finished, the Sixth
Street-Hazel Dell intersection will
be enlarged with new turn lanes
and traffic signals. A second intersection will be constructed on
Sixth Street just north of the
Green Lincoln-Mercury Mazda
dealership, with a new road behind the dealership linking the
two intersections.
The Sixth Street frontage road,
which is a piece of old Route 66,
also will change, including closing
a section near the south end.
Wal-Mart plans to occupy about
30 acres of the 41-acre site. The
store site, plus the Lincolnwood
project immediately to the north,
eventually will rival the Parkway
Pointe shopping center on Veterans Parkway in size.
Work also is under way on a
final 1,000-foot section that will
complete the 11th Street extension
between Stevenson Drive and
Hazel Dell Road, although city and
state transportation planners are
still negotiating for right-of-way
with businesses at the north end of
the section. Wal-Mart agreed to
pay for the extension as part of its
project.
A new CVS pharmacy at the
southeast corner of MacArthur
and Wabash is the first block in
what is expected to be major development along the MacArthur
extension.
“When you punch MacArthur
Boulevard down to I-72, that’s
going to be gold,” said Mike
Farmer, director of the city’s Office of Planning and Economic Development.
The potential of commercial and
retail development shifting to the
new south end of MacArthur is
one reason behind the formation
of the MacArthur Boulevard Business Association.
Merchants and businesses
along the existing portion of
MacArthur between South Grand
and Wabash avenues want to do
all they can to ensure they share in
the expected boom.
Work should begin this
spring on the first phase of an
overhaul of Capitol Avenue,
creating a promenade to better
showcase the state Capitol in
time for the bicentennial of the
birth of Abraham Lincoln.
“We’re preparing the bidding
documents for Second to 19th
Street, and that should be
wrapped up by the end of the
year,” said Paul O’Shea, planning and design coordinator for
the city Office of Planning and
Economic Development.
He said bidding on the Seventh to 11th street portion, the
first phase of the project, should
occur early next year.
“Depending on funding, we’d
add as many blocks as we could
to that,” he said.
The entire project, estimated
at $12 million, will revamp the
streetscape and pedestrian
spaces along Capitol Avenue
from the Statehouse to 19th. It
will include lighting, pavements, benches and signage.
The plan, developed by the
city’s Regional/Urban Design
Assistance Team, envisions
Capitol Avenue as the trunk of a
tree branching off to the Statehouse, the Abraham Lincoln
Presidential Library and Museum, the Lincoln Home neighborhood, the Prairie Capital
Convention Center and the
Fifth-Sixth Street entertainment
and commercial area.
“It will be part of a pedestrian-friendly pathway around
the downtown sites,” O’Shea
said. “Capitol Avenue represents one part of it. The Jackson
Street trail between the Lincoln
Home and the Capitol is another part.”
The goal is to create a promenade and clear path along Capitol Avenue from the east side of
the city to the Statehouse.
“It will be a ceremonial boulevard to give the Capitol Building more presence,” O’Shea
said.
pedestrian-friendly
pathway around
the downtown sites.”
— PAUL O’SHEA, PLANNING
AND DESIGN COORDINATOR FOR
THE CITY OFFICE OF PLANNING
AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
It also will provide a connecting link from downtown to the
neighborhoods on the east side
of Springfield, he added.
“It will be the type of gateway
promenade that should spur additional development and provide a grand doorstep to the
Capitol,” said Mike Farmer,
who heads the city’s Office of
Planning and Economic Development.
The overhaul will “transform
the street into a red carpet to
the Statehouse and other famed
downtown sites, including Lincoln’s home and the Abraham
Lincoln Presidential Library
and Museum,” according to the
R/UDAT plan.
Parking along Capitol Avenue would be all but eliminated, creating a three-lane, 80foot-wide corridor.
Trees would be pushed from
the edge of the sidewalks to
maximize the vista to the Capitol, and the street would be
repaved with a rougher texture
to emulate the brick pavement
of the past.
O’Shea said the first phase
should be completed by the end
of 2008 and will “show some
progress for the Lincoln Bicentennial.”
“Capitol Avenue will be special,” he said.
The city received a $2.5 million grant from the state in
2006, and Congress approved
$4 million for the initial phase
of the project. The city already
had received $1.5 million from
the state for planning, design,
permits and acquisition of
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OUTLOOK 2008 / TRANSPORTATION
PAGE
11A
Airborne
Figures provided by the
Abraham Lincoln Capital Airport
showing the number of passengers on planes headed out of
and coming into Springfield
since 2001:
2001
Emplanement
73,936
Deplanement
71,661
TOTAL 145,597
2002
Emplanement
110,774
Deplanement
109,709
TOTAL 220,483
2003
Emplanement
123,166
Deplanement
119,983
TOTAL 243,149
2004
Emplanement
113,623
Deplanement
109,277
TOTAL 222,900
2005
Emplanement
83,097
Deplanement
81,644
TOTAL 164,741
2006
Emplanement
66,804
Deplanement
64,228
TOTAL 131,032
File/The State Journal-Register
The base realignment involving the Illinois Air National Guard 183rd Fighter Wing is expected to be gradual but could begin in 2008.
2007 (through September)
Emplanement
44,205
Deplanement
43,312
TOTAL 87,517
Air service flying high again
Airport trying
to right itself
after turbulence
“I THINK we’ve
weathered the storm on
a few things. We have
our work cut out for us
to market the airport.”
By CHRIS DETTRO
— MARK HANNA,
AIRPORT EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
STAFF WRITER
It’s been an up-and-down year
for passenger service at Abraham
Lincoln Capital Airport, but airport executive director Mark
Hanna sees clearer skies ahead.
And although air service gets
most of the attention, he points
out that the regional airport is
“more than just three or four
counters in a main terminal.”
But air service is the face of the
airport, and it endured some
bumps in 2007.
In March, the airport lost service to St. Louis when RegionsAir
terminated two AmericanConnection flights because of crew-training issues with the Federal Aviation Administration.
“It really hit us hard, as it did
many regional airports,” Hanna
said.
But on April 24, United Airlines
shifted one of its five United Express flights from Springfield to
Chicago’s O’Hare International
Airport to Dulles International Airport in the Virginia suburbs of the
capital.
“That was a ‘good news’ story,”
Hanna said. “That’s a major hub
for American Airlines, and D.C.
historically has been in our top
five of requested destinations.
“Based on April-June revenues
annualized over 12 months, the
risk (about $100,000) is about half
of what we’d expected,” he said.
United is guaranteed up to $1.4
million in subsidies the first year if
the service loses money.
The Springfield airport received
a $390,000 federal grant to support the United Express flight. The
Quantum Growth Partnership, an
economic development campaign
of the Greater Springfield Chamber of Commerce, committed another $200,000 and the Springfield
Airport Authority agreed to guarantee the remainder.
Hanna said the daily flights on
50-seat jets need a load factor of
about 60 percent to earn a profit.
“There are some good options
with our D.C. service,” he said.
In June, only weeks after announcing nonstop jet service to
Las Vegas would begin in August,
the airport lost flights to Midway
Airport in Chicago when Big Sky
Airlines suspended its three daily
flights.
The airline had started the heavily subsidized service only about
six months earlier.
“Ridership never really seemed
to take off,” Hanna said. Airport
officials estimated it cost between
$150,000 and $160,000 a month to
subsidize the service.
A bone of contention always
was the competing shuttle flights
to and from Chicago offered by
the state of Illinois, and Hanna
said connections weren’t good for
the leisure traveler.
The roller coaster peaked again
on Aug. 17, however, when Allegiant Air began twice a week
flights on Mondays and Fridays to
and from Las Vegas.
“Emplanements are right
around where they need to be for
a start-up,” Hanna said. And even
though the summer travel season
is over, winter excursion packages
are available through the airport
Web site, he said.
And finally, on Nov. 4, the airport restored its traditional commuter route between Springfield
and St. Louis when Trans State
Airlines, American Airlines’ commuter partner, began two flights
daily on 50-seat jets with no subsidies. It is the first time in 30 years
St. Louis-Springfield service is
available via jets.
Hanna credits U.S. Sen. Dick
Durbin and others with working
with the U.S. Department of
Transportation to find a solution
to the lack of St. Louis service.
“We need to be able to provide
the connections that most people
want,” Hanna said. “We’re actively
analyzing and trying to accommodate as many connections as we
can. We hope for more flights
daily. We need to demonstrate to
them the market’s here.
“I think we’ve weathered the
storm on a few things. We have
our work cut out for us to market
the airport, to inform people service is up again to St. Louis.”
Hanna points to load factor per-
centages — the percentage of
available airline seats filled — as
an indication the airport hasn’t
lost market share despite the
changes in flights and service.
In August, the average load factor percentage was almost 73 percent, compared to 61 percent in
2006 and 58 percent in 2005. The
average was 72 percent in September, up 12.4 percent from a
year earlier.
“We have more people flying
with basically the same amount of
seats,” he said.
He said Capital Airport would
look at possibly adding a second
leisure destination in the first
quarter of 2008, probably in Arizona or Florida.
“But we must show we can provide passengers,” he said. “We
want to make sure our basic services are working.
“We’re also looking at another
major hub, but we want to make
sure it comes at the right time. We
want to have a long-term partner.”
The airport also has invested in
personnel and equipment to create
a new passenger services department.
“Our own staff provides
ticketing and ground support
services — things like baggage
handling and lavatory services —
for Allegiant and Tran States,”
Hanna said.
“These are local people with a
vested interest in it. We’re doing
everything we can to make the
travel experience out of Capital
Airport everything it can be.”
The department also provides
those services for charters that
come and go at the airport.
The intent isn’t to make a lot of
money with the service.
“We’re trying to use this as a
long-term incentive both to airlines and our customers,” Hanna
said, by offering airlines lower
costs on the ground in Springfield.
“It will be a key to our long-term
success.”
There are other changes on the
horizon at Capital Airport, too.
“The airport authority is concerned about the future of our
friends at the (Illinois Air National
Guard) 183rd Fighter Wing,
whose mission is going to
change,” Hanna said.
As a result of base realignment,
the Guard base at Abraham Lincoln Capital Airport won’t require
aircraft rescue and firefighting, he
said.
“The fire station will close
down,” he said. “Now we have to
find a solution for commercial airlines, and that can be a very substantial annual hit. We’re looking
at a lot of different options to meet
FAA requirements.”
The realignment probably will
be gradual, though it could begin
in 2008.
The airport also is home to 190
small-business and recreational
aircraft, and Hanna said that is an
important sector.
“We don’t want to forget where
aviation came from or take it for
granted,” he said, adding that improvements have been made in
that area.
There will be taxiway widening
in the airport’s northern quadrant
in 2008, and in recent years, individual T-hangars have been built
in the south quadrant.
The Springfield Airport Authori-
ty also will complete initial planning and design for an airport
commerce park in the south quadrant next year.
Hanna calls it “the next major
endeavor.” The park will focus on
aviation-oriented businesses, although that’s not a prerequisite.
“It’s a priority to get this off center,” he said.
Rethink Indulgence. Rethink American.
Saturn of Springfield
Years in Business: The Sattler Family has owned and operated Saturn of Springfield for 15 years.
Chuck Sattler is the Owner and General Manager of the Saturn Dealership.
Official Name. Saturn of Springfield.
New in Saturn Models: In 2007 the Saturn Outlook was
introduced. The Outlook is a 8 Passenger SUV, and it offers the best gas
mileage of any 8-passenger SUV. These are the new SUVs that are to
replace the mini-vans. The Outlook is very stylish, and we have several
2008 models in-stock.
Saturn has redesigned the the Vue for 2008. The new VUE offers 137
safety features, and a bold new look. The Press has been raving about this
new Saturn. We have several 2008 VUEs in-stock to choose from.
Saturn has a brand new model coming to our store in late November.
It will be called the Saturn Astra, and it will be imported from Germany.
This car has been very popular in Europe. Chuck Sattler told us that he had
a chance to drive the the Astra in a closed track recently, and was highly
impressed with cars response and handling. He knows it will be a proud
winner against the Honda, Toyota, Mazda, VW. Saturn of Springfield is
very excited for this vehicle to enter our new line up.
The Saturn Sky convertible has been a very popular vehicle for us. We
have a hard time keeping them in-stock said Chuck Sattler. We have 2008
models on order, and they should arrive at the dealership soon.
The Saturn Aura is our new Sedan. The Aura was voted the North
American Car of the Year in 2007. When your competition is the likes of
Lexus, Mercedes, Jaguar, Infinity, Nissan, Toyota, and Honda it’s an honor to be named the best!!! We have
a great variety of these models on the lot now.
Saturn of Springfield Pre-owned Vehicles: Saturn of Springfield now offers the largest
pre-owned vehicle selection in the 15-year history. Chuck Sattler said the Pre-owned department has been
very busy due to this expansion. We now offer more choices for the customer. Saturn offers Certified
Pre-owned vehicle for added comfort of buying a used vehicle. These Certified vehicles go through a Saturn
Certified test before they can be approved to be a Saturn Certified Vehicle. Saturn of Springfield wants the
new owner to be very confident that they are purchasing a quality vehicle from us.
Saturn of Springfield Service Department: Our Service department offers Professionally
Trained/Top quality Technicians to work on your vehicle. Our Technicians take a lot of pride in their work,
so you can always count on us to fix your car right the first time. Don’t trust your vehicle services work to
just anyone. Saturn of Springfield Technicians are factory trained on all GM vehicles, and they stay up
to date on the latest information. Chuck Sattler said that his technicians attend an average of 15 to 20
classes per year for on-going training. Whether it’s your first 3,000 mile inspection or your 300,000 mile
tune up, get it done right the first time...Bring it on home to Saturn of Springfield. We will work on all
Vehicles GM or Non-GM we are here for you!! Saturn Service department has a very
comfortable waiting room with free snacks while you wait. We offer free shuttle transportation within the
Springfield area.
Come and see the all new Saturn Line up for yourself, and we know you will be impressed!! We offer great
products with a no hassle no haggle pricing. We are here to make sure you are satisfied with our vehicle
exchange program and our best coverage in America the Saturn 100,000 mile/5-year limited powertrain
warranty, plus roadside assistance and courtesy transportation.
Jack Stoldt
Auto Service Center
Since the 1970s, Jack Stoldt Auto
Service Center has been an anchor
in its same location in downtown
Springfield. Jack Stoldt is located at
717 S. Fifth St.
NOW ITS EASIER TO GET TO SATURN OF SPRINGFIELD WITH PRAIRIE CROSSING ROAD OPENING!
621843
jackstoldtauto@mechanicnet.co
2540 Prairie Crossing Drive | 1 mile South of White Oaks Mall
217.793.6010 | www.springfieldsaturn.com
621878
Ph 522-9113
PAGE
12A
Proposed
transit hub
would keep
city on move
By CHRIS DETTRO
STAFF WRITER
Just like the trains and buses it would
be housing, planning will have to remain
on time in order for a site to be picked in
2008 for a long-discussed public transportation hub in Springfield.
The Springfield Mass Transit District
has started its search for an engineering
firm to do an environmental analysis of
potential sites, primarily along existing
rail corridors.
The idea of railroad relocation and a
one-stop transportation hub for buses,
trains, taxies and rental cars isn’t new.
But five years ago, the hub became part of
the Rural/Urban Design Assistance Team
(R/UDAT) recommendations for the
downtown area.
The consulting team’s recommendations included combining the Third, 10th
and 19th street railroad tracks into one
corridor for better traffic flow and to free
up space for restoration projects.
The creation of a downtown “promenade” also was recommended by the
team, which spent months examining
downtown and what would improve it.
The transportation hub would be located along the new rail corridor, and a
consultant’s report has estimated the cost
of construction at $14 million to $18 million.
The U.S. Department of Transportation
this summer approved $300,000 for environmental and engineering studies once a
site is selected.
Linda Tisdale, SMTD executive director, said the environmental study is just an
initial step toward applying for the remainder of an original grant of $1 million.
She earlier said she hopes a recommendation can be made to the district board next
month and the environmental study can
begin in January.
One of the priorities for both the
SMTD and the city is relocation of the
congested bus transfer stations at Fifth
Street and Capitol Avenue, said Paul
O’Shea, the city’s design and planning coordinator.
O’Shea said if the transfer stations
could be off the street, it would be a plus.
About $5 million more in federal
money probably would be required to
help buy the needed property, wherever
The Rural/Urban Design Assistance Team recommended combining the railroad tracks on Third, above, 10th and 19th streets to make one rail
corridor and to create a transportation hub somewhere on the new corridor.
the center, which is to be built in two
stages, ends up.
The bus transfer center would be the
first stage, then, a larger building would
be constructed adjacent to the bus center
to accommodate rail, taxi, rental-car and
shuttle traffic.
Construction of a bus-transfer facility in
the first phase would cost $5 million to $6
million and take up to three years, according to statements previously made by consultants.
Relocation of the Third Street railroad
tracks, the Amtrak route through Springfield, was one of the R/UDAT recommen-
dations for creation of the promenade and
other pedestrian trails leading to the Capitol.
O’Shea said a variety of restoration
projects along Capitol Avenue, as well as
on Jackson Street between the Capitol
and the Lincoln Home National Historic
Site, are proceeding on their own without
rail relocation.
Downtown Springfield Inc. executive director Victoria Clemons said DSI isn’t
backing a specific site but would like
to see something built on the periphery
of downtown to reduce bus congestion and
train traffic in the central business district.
All aboard
FY2005
Springfield Amtrak ridership, provided by Amtrak:
110,182
FY2001
FY2003
FY2006
91,000
92,379
110,276
FY2002
FY2004
FY2007
80,115
98,623
141,936
Jim s
Say
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622817
OUTLOOK 2008 / TRANSPORTATION
PAGE
13A
Car buyers want fuel
efficiency, local dealers say
By CHRIS DETTRO
STAFF WRITER
For the past several years,
the saying has been that America’s best-selling car is a truck.
But those days may be ending as gas prices again edge
toward $3 per gallon and newvehicle buyers move away
from SUVs and trucks toward
more fuel-efficient vehicles.
“There is no question there
is a trend moving away from
larger SUVs and pick-up
trucks toward cars and
crossover vehicles,” said Peter
Sander, president of the
Springfield-based Illinois Automobile Dealers Association.
“The trend is definitely moving
back to automobiles.”
Crossover SUVs are miniSUVs built on a more economical and fuel-efficient platform.
But they sit higher than a car
and generally have more cargo
space.
Sander said that crossovers,
which include vehicles such as
the Nissan Rogue, Ford Edge,
Chrysler Pacifica and Chevrolet Equinox, sometimes are
counted as truck sales, making
exact sales numbers hard to
determine.
Sales of hybrid vehicles,
which combine features of the
internal combustion engine
with an electric motor, also are
increasing, he said.
Hybrids, such as the Toyota
Prius, Honda Civic hybrid and
Ford Escape, are primarily
propelled by an internal combustion engine like conventional vehicles. But they also
convert energy normally wasted during coasting and braking into electricity, which is
stored in a battery until needed by the electric motor.
Diesel-powered vehicles
also are becoming popular
again, Sander said.
“They’re more fuel-efficient
and run cleaner and quieter
than the diesels of the past,”
he said.
Sean Grant, general manager of Landmark Automotive
Group, said the move toward
more fuel efficiency — particularly vehicles that get more
than 30 miles per gallon —
also is helping the used-vehicle
business as consumers trade
in trucks and SUVs for hybrids
or diesel-powered vehicles.
“People are buying more
used than new right now,” he
said. “They’re more cost-conscious.”
Grant said the service end of
the business is “stable to increasing” as people hang on to
their vehicles longer.
“Manufacturers are trying to
overcome higher gas prices by
alleviating the costs of repairing a vehicle,” Grant said.
Chrysler and Jeep, for example, offer limited lifetime
power train warranties on
their vehicles.
Grant also said he sees an
increase in vehicles that use E85 ethanol as fuel. “But the
government has to get behind
helping gas station owners install these pumps,” he said.
E-85 ethanol is used in flexible-fuel engines modified to accept higher concentrations of
ethanol. So far, only about 160
such stations exist in Illinois.
But concern in the auto industry goes beyond how the
price of fuel affects what kind
of car a consumer will buy.
New auto sales have been
sagging since the summer,
and that’s not expected to
change soon.
“We’ve gone from selling 18
million new vehicles nationwide to 16 million over the
past three or four years,”
Grant said. “It’s hard to predict
fuel prices, but I expect the
trend will continue in the near
future, until the spring of next
year I would think.”
Industry analysts predict
new car sales of 16 million for
2007, compared with 16.5 million last year.
“That’s still a strong year,
even though it is down,”
Sander said.
And despite fuel prices and
consumers’ cost-consciousness, sales of import luxury
brands such as Lexus and
BMW continue to grow.
Overall, Toyota is tops in
sales, followed by Chevrolet,
Honda and Ford.
“The biggest change in the
past five years is the rise of
Toyota and Honda in sales,”
Sander said.
About 150 people attended a Nov. 3, 2006, meeting on night bus service, a pilot program that is expected to begin soon.
City still awaits night bus service
By JOHN REYNOLDS
STAFF WRITER
People who work the late shift
should have an easier time getting
to and from work when the Springfield Mass Transit District starts its
night bus service pilot program
later this year.
Supporters hope the pilot program will lead to permanent night
bus service.
“Some of our people out there
searching for a job do not have a
car,” said Mary Beth Ray, director
of career development services at
Lincoln Land Community College.
“They may need to be in a job a
few months or even a year before
they can afford a car. They are
then relying on bus service to get
them to and from work.”
Bus service in Springfield ends
about 6 p.m., but the pilot program
would extend limited service to
midnight. The district has received
a $321,000 grant to fund the project, which officials say is enough to
run three routes about six to eight
months.
One route, on the north end,
would serve both hospitals as well
as the Wal-Mart on Dirksen Parkway. A southeast route would go
past the Capital City Shopping
Center and through some east-side
neighborhoods. The third route
would cover west-side locations.
Linda Tisdale, executive director
of the SMTD, said the routes were
designed to cover as many large
employers as possible. The number
of routes was limited by the
$321,000 grant, she said.
After the routes were unveiled,
some people were concerned that
they do not go to the University of
Illinois at Springfield or Lincoln
Land Community College.
“If we can find money to continue the night service after the grant
money is gone, of course the colleges are going to be made a priority,” Tisdale said in September.
“We’ll just have to see. The amount
of service we have will always be
dictated by the amount of money
we have.”
As of late October, Tisdale and
other SMTD officials were hoping
that the pilot program could begin
soon. The district had made job of-
fers to five new drivers, who have
to pass drug tests and an Illinois
Department of Transportation
physical before they can work.
There is no guarantee that the
service will continue after the pilot
program ends. Tisdale said permanent night service will depend on
the district’s ability to pay for it.
“There are a lot of ifs out there,”
Tisdale said.
In February, an outside study
group, Ubitron Associates Inc., determined that evening bus service
in Springfield was not only feasible
but also necessary to provide universal access to residents. The report paved the way for planning to
begin on proposed routes and
schedules.
The Central Illinois Organizing
Committee, a local citizens group,
has been a proponent of evening
bus service since 2004. Member
Jane Ford said evening bus service
could help Springfield with other
local issues.
“When you talk to homeless
shelters and people like that, they
will tell you that transportation is
the number one obstacle for people
getting themselves up and out of
temporary homeless situations,”
Ford said.
During their preparation work,
the CIOP committee looked at census information and determined
that most people who do not have
cars live on the east and northeast
sides of Springfield. The three
routes for the pilot program were
drawn up to get these people to
sections of towns where most of
the jobs are located.
Businesses specifically targeted
by the routes included St. John’s
Hospital and Memorial Medical
Center, nursing homes and big-box
retail establishments. These types
of businesses typically require
workers around the clock.
While the basis for night bus
service has been employmentbased, Ford said the issue goes beyond economics.
“It’s also a social justice issue,”
Ford said. “It’s the right thing to
do. What kind of community do we
want to live in? Do we want to live
in one that denies people access to
full citizenship because they don’t
have transportation to a job?”
www.shermanil.org • www.williamsvilleil.org
A Guide to What Our Area Has to Offer
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PAGE
14A
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OUTLOOK 2008
FINANCE
PAGE
16A
FINANCE / OUTLOOK 2008
Nation may face unstable economy, but
environment competitive in local banking
By CHRIS DETTRO
STAFF WRITER
It’s been a tough year, generally, for
banking.
Earnings at the country’s biggest
banks are down. The subprime mortgage crisis, which boiled over this summer, has particularly affected the financial services and banking industry.
The third quarter was labeled “probably the most challenging quarter
we’ve seen in a real, real long time,” by
a managing director for Fitch Ratings,
which covers North American banks.
But Springfield banks aren’t relying
so much on subprime mortgages —
home loans made to borrowers with
poor credit.
“For the most part, Springfield is not
affected by subprime lending,” said
Mike Houston, president and CEO of
Town & Country Bank. “What there is
of it is mostly through mortgage brokers.
“But that’s not what exists across the
country.”
American Home Mortgage, which
had two city offices, filed for bankruptcy protection in August, saying the
funding it needed to make new loans
had been effectively cut off by “extraordinary disruptions” in the market.
Dick McCord, president and CEO of
Illinois National Bank, said the subprime crisis, as it relates to Springfield,
is largely psychological.
“It created a problem, mainly because the media talk about it so much,”
McCord said. “We’ve talked ourselves
into it to a certain extent. We get the
New York-Florida-California spin on it
from the national media.”
Housing foreclosures nationally have
jumped to an all-time high, but Houston
said that statistic is somewhat misleading.
He said if the second-quarter foreclosures in four states — California, Arizona, Nevada and Florida — are removed from the statistics, the number
of foreclosures in the other 46 states is
fewer than last year. With those four
states, it was a record number.
“All four of those states have one
thing in common — large increases in
home values that aren’t sustainable,” he
said.
McCord said some people who make
a living building homes are struggling
because of lack of sales.
“It’s a poor economy for people in
the homebuilding market unless
they’re building modestly priced
homes. The big ones seem to be moving slowly.”
Houston said the Springfield housing
market still is attractive for homes of
$200,000 and less.
He also doesn’t foresee the rash of
mortgage refinancings that have accompanied previous interest rate cuts
because most homeowners already
have refinanced to low rates.
McCord said it has been a difficult
year for banks even without the problems in the national housing market.
“Interest rates have spent most of the
year in an inverted yield curve,” he
said.
He said the rate charged banks for
short-term overnight money has been
about 5.25 percent, while the Treasury
markets are in the 3.9 percent to 4.5
percent range.
“You’re paying more for overnight
money than what you’re getting when
investing long-term,” McCord said.
“There’s no incentive to invest longterm, and that makes it difficult.”
But for borrowers, lending rates are
in their favor.
“From a consumer point of view, interest rates are very friendly,” Houston
said. “I think the Fed will continue to
cut rates and the prime interest rate
will come down.
“Those financing purchases will be
looking at attractive types of rates. And
I believe it will be better next year.”
Mortgage rates remain low, and car
loans are significantly below prime.
“It’s been a tough year for banks that
depend on retail lending,” McCord said.
“It looks tough in 2008, too.
“We see the Federal Reserve cutting
rates, but the last thing we need is inflation. On the other hand, if it gets people
spending money they wouldn’t have
spent before, then the Fed was right. I
can make an argument both ways.”
National analysts see signs of improvement in the banking industry.
But with the economy showing indications of retail weakness, housing still
struggling and mortgage delinquencies
and foreclosures at high levels, analysts
aren’t looking for much improvement
through the end of the year and maybe
even into 2008.
Houston said there is an extremely
competitive environment in the Springfield banking community.
“Our interest margins here are much
narrower than what you find across the
state and across the country,” Houston
said. “I think you will see new services
and a reduction in the cost of banking
services because of the competition.
“You’re going to see a return to good,
solid lending, and Springfield lenders
have been good, solid lenders.”
Financial institutions
in Sangamon County
Banks
BANK OF SPRINGFIELD
2600 Stevenson Drive
Springfield, IL 62794-9301
ILLINI BANK
3200 W. Iles Ave.
INDEPENDENT BANKERS' BANK
3161 West White Oaks Drive,
Suite 300
MARINE BANK, SPRINGFIELD
3050 Wabash Ave.
ROCHESTER STATE BANK
133 N. John St.
Rochester, IL 62563
TOWN & COUNTRY BANK
Buffalo Road
Buffalo, IL 62515
TOWN & COUNTRY BANK OF
SPRINGFIELD
1925 S. MacArthur Blvd.
UNITED COMMUNITY BANK
301 N. Main St.
Chatham, IL 62629
WARREN-BOYNTON STATE BANK
702 W. Illinois St.
New Berlin, IL 62670
Hoarding your
WILLIAMSVILLE STATE BANK
& TRUST
512 W. Main St.
Williamsville, IL 62693-0379
GOLD
Credit Unions
FINANCIAL PARTNERS
CREDIT UNION
940 N. MacArthur Blvd.
HEARTLAND CREDIT UNION
ILLINOIS EDUCATION ASSOCIATION
CREDIT UNION
100 E. Edwards St.
IMPERIAL CREDIT UNION
P.O. Box 4525
MEMORIAL HEALTH SYSTEM
EMPLOYEE CREDIT UNION
701 N. First St., Room C18
FUNERAL SERVICE CREDIT UNION
P.O. Box 7126
IRSE CREDIT UNION
3101 Constitution Drive, Ste. 111
J.W. HOBBS CORP. CREDIT UNION
1034 E. Ash St.
Artville
12 things to do with your money
11
5
Worried about retirement? Or just about getting
together next month’s rent? Everyone, no matter what
his or her income level or circumstances, seems to
worry about money. So here are a dozen things you can
do about money — to save it, invest it, have more of it
— instead of worrying about it. The list below was compiled from a variety of sources and is in no particular
order of importance:
1
Increase the percentage of dividendyielding investments in the equity
component of your portfolio.
That way, you’ll continue to earn income
“whether the market is going up, down or sideways,” said Joel Gustafson, president of investment
services at Warren-Boynton Financial Center. You’ll also
enhance your total return with dividends.
2
For long-term investors, reinvest all
dividends and capital gains.
3
Review your health insurance and
other benefit choices at work.
4
While we’re on the subject of
insurance, consider raising the
deductible on your comprehensive
auto insurance or eliminating it if
thinking about buying a new car.
This not only adds to the investment but is a
way to keep dollar cost averaging in the
investment over time automatically.
Do you use the health insurance you chose on
a regular basis, or would a less expensive
option cover you just as well in an emergency? Take a
look at your other benefits, too.
Call your insurance agent to get quotes on
these changes, or shop around a little for rates.
If you’re getting a raise, think about
investing the difference in your
year-to-year salary in your 401(k).
If you do it before you get that first larger
paycheck, you probably won’t even miss it.
6
Replace your existing light bulbs
with compact fluorescent ones.
Replacing a 75-watt bulb with a 26-watt
equivalent CFL will save you about $7.15 in
a year. Replacing 14 incandescent bulbs will put $100 a
year in your pocket.
Install a programmable thermostat.
With a programmable thermostat your air
conditioner or furnace won’t run as much
during the day when you’re away from home
or during the night when you’re asleep. This will save a
lot on your energy bills.
7
Don’t wait for the market “bottom”
to invest.
8
Wait until a mutual fund
distributes its year-end dividends
and capital gains in non-IRAs before
investing.
12
SANGAMO CHAPTER CREDIT UNION
310 South Grand Avenue E.
SANGAMON SCHOOLS
CREDIT UNION
1420 S. Eighth St.
SPRINGFIELD CITY EMPLOYEES
CREDIT UNION
300 S. Seventh St., Room B-4
SPRINGFIELD FIREFIGHTERS
CREDIT UNION
2401 Peoria Road
Seek the advice of an
experienced professional
financial adviser.
You’re not paying for information. You’re
paying for knowledge, wisdom and impartial personal guidance.
— compiled by Chris Dettro
“We don’t realize where the market bottom is
until after the fact,” Gustafson said. “You will
miss too many long-term opportunities.”
You’ll avoid unnecessary tax consequences.
9
Rebalance your portfolio.
Every year some investments in your portfolio
will outpace others, causing an imbalance in
the percentages you want invested in stocks, bonds,
money market funds, etc.
10
Sign up for a customer-rewards program at places
where you shop regularly.
Most are free. And speaking of free,
start using the library. The free stuff you
can borrow ranges from books to CDs and DVDs.
Call Jay Rogers or Eric Hegele in Chatham
483-3343 Plummer Blvd., Chatham, IL
Call Todd Howe or Julie Schaub in Rochester
498-9009 Rte 29 & Walnut, Rochester, IL
www.banktr.com
OUTLOOK 2008 / FINANCE
PAGE
17A
And the survey
SAYS ...
Census Bureau shows average income
here is more than rest of Illinois, nation
By CHRIS DETTRO
STAFF WRITER
Springfield has a higher per
capita income than the national
and state averages, but about 13
percent of residents live below
the poverty level, according to
estimates from the U.S. Census
Bureau.
About 1,114 households earn
$200,000 or more annually, but
4,390 earn less than $10,000.
The majority of our workforce — 36,815 people — are
private wage and salary workers. More than 16,000 are government workers, and 3,119 are
self-employed in unincorporated businesses. Almost 22,000
workers are management or
professional workers. Only 34
city of Springfield residents list
farming, fishing or forestry
occupations.
The Census Bureau’s 2006
American Community Survey
found Springfield’s per capita
income to be $27,303, or 2.8
percent higher than the Illinois
figure of $26,514 and almost 7.5
percent more than the $25,267
national average. Per capita
income for the Midwest as a
region was $24,461, about 10.5
percent less than the
Springfield figure.
The American Community
Survey is survey-based and
uses extrapolations of 2000 census data to arrive at its figures,
said Norm Sims, executive
director of the SpringfieldSangamon County Regional
Planning Commission. He said
the survey isn’t as accurate as
actual census figures, but new
census data won’t be available
until 2010.
Springfield doesn’t fare as
well when household and family income is measured against
the statewide figures.
The median household
income — the level at which
half the households have
incomes lower and half have
incomes above — for
Springfield is $45,926, compared to $52,006 for the state
and $48,451 for the nation.
The mean, or average, household income for Springfield is
$60,208 compared to $69,647
for Illinois and $65,527 for the
nation.
Median family income for
Springfield is $59,899, while
Illinois’ is $63,121 and the
nation $58,526.
The average figures are
$74,212 for Springfield, $81,397
for the state and $76,130 for the
nation.
Sims said it isn’t uncommon
that family income is higher
than household income.
Household income includes
people who may share a residence because they have lower
paying jobs or only one person
in the residence is working, he
said.
Median figures for the state
and the nation include cities
much larger than Springfield,
such as Chicago, with residents
much wealthier than those
here, Sims said.
He said the per capita income
for Springfield has shown a
steady increase over the years
“and appears to be greater than
the inflationary rate.”
$27,303
Springfield’s average
per capita income
$26,514
Illinois average
per capita income
$25,267
National average
per capita income
$24,461
Midwest region average
per capita income
Source: Census Bureau’s 2006
American Community Survey
The American Community
Survey per capita income figure
for Springfield in 2005 was
$27,052 and $23,324 in 2000,
based on actual census figures.
In 1990, per capita income was
only $14,813, according to actual census figures.
The survey also looked at
how we get to work, and the
results shouldn’t surprise anyone who has observed the
morning commute.
Of Springfield’s 55,135 workers 16 years or older, 45,828, or
83 percent, drove alone in a car,
truck or van. Another 4,315 carpooled, and 856 took public
transportation, excluding taxicabs.
A total of 1,274 walked to
work.
The average travel time to
work for all methods of transportation was 17 minutes.
The regional planning commission staff also took some
time to debunk what has
become a somewhat common
perception.
The median east-west line for
Springfield population — meaning that half the population lives
on one side of the line and half
on the other — isn’t MacArthur
Boulevard. It isn’t even Walnut
Street.
Using 2000 census blocks, the
commission found that 42,448
people live west of MacArthur
Boulevard and 67,496 live east
of that dividing line.
When Walnut Street is used
as the line, they found 46,477
people lived west of Walnut and
63,467 lives east of it.
The staff didn’t determine the
median east-west population
line, but it isn’t as far west as it
is perceived.
“We would expect that the
population is moving west, but
it is generally less dense than in
the older part of the city,” Sims
said. He cited natural barriers
to population growth, such as
the Sangamon River flood
plain, the river itself and Lake
Springfield as one reason for
the westward expansion.
“Population moves along the
path of least resistance and lowest risk,” he said.
Lou Lower, president and CEO of Horace Mann Educators, says he’s pleased with the first three quarters of 2007.
Horace Mann projects
a consistent performance
HORACE MANN Per-share earnings (2006) $2.19
By CHRIS DETTRO
STAFF WRITER
Horace Mann Educators continued performing up to expectations
in 2007 after posting record pershare earnings in 2006.
The company, which employs
about 1,100 people at its
Springfield headquarters, recently
reported a net income of $64.8
million for the first nine months of
2007, down about 7.6 percent from
net income of $70.1 million for the
same period in 2006.
Per-share earnings are down
about 6.5 percent, from $1.55 to
$1.45.
Horace Mann president and
CEO Lou Lower said third-quarter
earnings of $18.4 million or 41
cents per share were “consistent
with prior year and our expectations.”
Despite what he called a benign
hurricane season, catastrophe
losses in the third quarter were
greater than in 2006 “and somewhat higher than normal, primarily as a result of storms in the
Midwest,” he said.
“In terms of our year-end earnings outlook, at this time we are
unable to fully assess the fourthquarter effect of the Southern
California wildfires,” Lower said.
“However, based on the current
preliminary information available,
we do not anticipate that these
▲ Per-share earnings (2007 to date) $1.45 ▼ Per-share earnings (estimated year-end) $1.80-$1.95 ▲
season that never materialized.
Hallman said the insurer also
builds a certain level of catastrophic losses into its long-term
earning projections.
He also pointed out that, despite
the quiet hurricane season last
year, the company reported
approximately $20 million in catastrophic losses in 2006 from
“numerous, smaller events.”
Horace Mann also added a
motor club to its traditional autoinsurance coverage in 2007.
The club includes roadside
and repair assistance, towing
and other emergency services,
travel planning services, bond
and legal expense reimbursement
and discounts on travel services,
dining, entertainment and retail
sales.
The insurer earlier this summer
launched the program through a
partnership with the Cross
Country Motor Club. The club has
been launched in 24 states, including Illinois, but eventually will go
nationwide.
Horace Mann’s career agency
sales force totaled 797 agents as of
Sept. 30, a 4 percent decline from
a year ago.
“As we continue transitioning
to our new agency business model,
we expect the agent count to continue to decline somewhat over
the intermediate term,” Lower
said.
After record earnings
last year, company’s
president and CEO reports
2007 is meeting expectations
fires will have a significant impact
on our current estimate of full
year 2007 net income.”
The company estimates net
income before realized investment
gains and losses of between $1.80
and $1.95 per share.
Lower said the lower numbers
so far in 2007 were expected after
an exceptional 2006.
Lower said he also was pleased
with overall sales growth through
the first nine months of the year.
Last year also was helped by
one of the quietest hurricane seasons on record, and senior vice
president for finance Dwayne
Hallman said the company continues to restrict new home and auto
polices in the state of Florida.
First- and second-quarter earnings also were on track with the
company’s expectations.
Last year’s $2.19-per-share
earnings were a record for the 62year-old company.
Estimates for this year are for
earnings per share between $1.80
and $1.95
Hallman said the company
tends to look at its totals over a 12month period.
Horace Mann specializes in
homeowner, auto and life insurance, as well as retirement and
other financial products for educators.
Horace Mann was among insurers hit by one of the worst hurricane seasons on record in 2005,
including Hurricanes Katrina and
Rita, only to be followed by a quiet
year along the Atlantic and Gulf
coasts in 2006.
The company took steps to limit
exposure along the Gulf and
Atlantic coasts in 2007 as forecasters predicted an active hurricane
12
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PAGE
18A
FINANCE / OUTLOOK 2008
Moving on out to the west side
AIG makes
transition
out of Franklin
Life Building
By CHRIS DETTRO
STAFF WRITER
For the past several months, the 450
employees of AIG American General Life
Insurance in Springfield have been sharing their imposing complex at Sixth Street
and Lawrence Avenue with a few hundred
Illinois State Police employees.
But sometime early next year, 50 semitrailer loads of new office furniture will be
unloaded at the $25 million AIG American
General Service Center, and that will all
start to change.
After the furniture arrives, AIG American General folks will begin to move into
the new three-story building at 3051 Hollis Drive, just behind Best Buy and north
of the Parkway Pointe 8 theater on the
city’s west side. AIG intends to have the
move completed by the end of March.
The state of Illinois reached agreement
in February to buy the former Franklin
Life headquarters for $13.25 million.
About 700 Illinois State Police employees,
including 240 who were moved out of the
Illinois State Armory with its leaky pipes
and other structural problems, eventually
will occupy about 70 percent of the complex. Other agencies will be transitioned
into the remaining space.
State police operations in Springfield
have been spread among seven leased
and four state-owned properties.
American General has agreed to make
$300,000 worth of improvements to prepare the building for state use while the
state has committed $2.8 million in economic incentives to American General, including income tax credits for job retention and job training.
By building the new service center,
“AIG committed to being an active partner
in the Springfield community,” said Dale
Sachtleben, vice president for customer
services and Springfield site leader. “Our
decision to be here in Springfield is due to
the quality and performance of our employees.”
In early summer, about 250 commandorganization employees of the state police
began moving into the AIG complex.
Rich Saal/The State Journal-Register
The new headquarters for AIG American General Life Insurance is at 3051 Hollis Drive.
“AIG COMMITTED to being an active partner in the
Springfield community. Our decision to be here in Springfield
is due to the quality and performance of our employees.”
— DALE SACHTLEBEN, AIG’S VICE PRESIDENT FOR CUSTOMER SERVICES
“We’re proud of our relationship with
the state police,” Sachtleben said.
He said that is evidenced by AIG’s donations in May of Becker Park and a
Springfield landmark, a 58-year-old statue
of Ben Franklin, to the Illinois State Police
Heritage Foundation.
State police intend to use the 1.5-acre
garden park just north of the AIG building
as a memorial for fallen troopers.
Ben Franklin will continue to overlook
Sixth Street, just as he’s done since 1949.
The company also has made several donations of artifacts to the Sangamon Valley Collection at Lincoln Library, and indirectly through the Becker family, a bust of
Franklin Life founder Charles E. Becker
was given to Springfield College in Illinois.
An auction of office furnishings, old
photographs and artwork was conducted
at the end of October.
“We’re proud of our past and proud of
the future that we’re building,” Sachtleben
said.
Planning for the AIG service center has
included input from employees, and samples of the new office furniture and surroundings have been erected in the current building so employees can discover
any potential problems in advance of the
move.
“We have focused on making it possible
for our employees to have a productive
and professional place to work,”
Sachtleben said.
The building will incorporate new technology in an effort to make things fast and
convenient for the company’s three million policyholders, he said.
The building has space for up to 500
employees to accommodate expansion, he
said.
With the idea of fostering open communication among employees, the new building features short cubicle walls, a large
employee gathering place and tall windows to allow lots of sunlight.
Training rooms and conference rooms
with up-to-date audio-visual capabilities,
wireless technology and secure Internet
access also are part of the package.
“We want to attract and retain quality
employees in Springfield, and this design
will enable us to do that,” he said.
The new building also will have convenient parking and is close to the Wabash
Trail.
Houston-based American General acquired the former Franklin Life of Springfield in 1995.
AIG, based in New York, acquired
American General in 2001.
AIG is one of the world’s largest financial services companies with net income
of more than $14 billion in 2006 and operations in more than 130 countries.
623203
OUTLOOK 2008 / COMMUNITY
PAGE
19A
Broadband popular
... if you’re connected
By CHRIS DETTRO
STAFF WRITER
Broadband Internet service
has become increasingly
available — and increasingly
popular — in urban areas of
Illinois. But what about smaller communities and rural
areas?
Instead of DSL, cable or
wireless Internet, many rural
residents have to choose between slow dial-up modems
or expensive satellite Internet
service.
“It’s hard to quantify what
areas have broadband access
because there’s no good mapping of it,” said Carolyn
Brown Hodge, director of
rural affairs for Lt. Gov. Pat
Quinn. “The issue is, the
providers don’t want to give
you the information. But
we’re slowly getting the information.
“We’d like to map the
haves and have-nots,” she
said. “But there are large
areas where dial-up is the
only option.”
Ryan Croke, senior policy
advisor for the lieutenant governor’s office, said only 20
percent of rural residences
have broadband access nationwide.
“Everyone has access to
high-speed Internet if they
have a satellite dish and a
view of the southern sky,” he
said.
But that type of service is
more expensive — with between $200 and $400 in startup costs — than options available in urban areas.
Officials
find it hard
to gauge
coverage in
rural areas
Croke estimates that less
than half of rural residents in
Illinois are using high-speed
Internet service.
“We’re working on a campaign to improve speed of
service in all parts of the
state,” he said.
He points to the Vince Demuzio Rural Broadband Initiative, a $1 million pilot project designed to extend highspeed Internet to underserved
areas of Macoupin and Montgomery counties.
Hodge said surveys showed
that broadband access was
more widespread in the two
counties than anticipated,
and as a result, the initiative
will be redirected to increase
Internet speeds for businesses.
“Hospitals, businesses, law
enforcement all wanted more
speed,” she said. “The fiber
just wasn’t big enough.”
Croke said the project aims
to “improve the backbone of
the Internet so providers of
wireless and fiber can do it
more affordably in rural
areas.”
Hodge said the economy in
rural Illinois will suffer if Internet speeds don’t increase
along with Internet capabilities.
If some parts of the country
and the state have access to
high-speed networks capable
of transmitting data at high
speeds and others don’t,
those without can’t compete,
she said.
“The ability to communicate and send information in
real-time will be critical in
areas such as health,” Croke
said.
Illinois’ two largest telephone companies, AT&T and
Verizon, say they are continually trying to expand highspeed Internet access.
Verizon offers DSL service
to about 80 percent of its service area in Illinois, spokeswoman Karen Boswell said
earlier this year. In the last
three months of 2006, she
said, Verizon set up DSL service in about 20 new areas —
mainly small towns in central
and southern Illinois — and
plans to expand service to 28
more areas by summer.
AT&T in July announced a
goal of making high-speed
broadband service available to
every customer within its service area by the end of 2007.
About 85 percent of households would be offered
ground-based DSL service,
and the remaining 15 percent
will be offered broadband
satellite Internet through
WildBlue.
While some businesses here and elsewhere offer free Wi-Fi for patrons, officials want to find a
vendor to provide the service citywide.
Springfield still pursuing wireless deal
By CHRIS DETTRO
STAFF WRITER
The city of Springfield is back in
the business of seeking a partner to
provide citywide wireless Internet
service.
A deal with telecommunications
giant AT&T was announced in 2006,
but by summer 2007, the much-ballyhooed deal was dead.
AT&T changed its business model
and decided against such ventures,
leaving the city still without wireless
Internet, but not back at square one.
“Since AT&T backed out, we’ve
had a couple of other companies express interest,” said Jim Donelan, executive assistant to Mayor Tim
Davlin. One of those, Xanadoo.com,
is ready to jump into the Springfield
using a wireless card.
Donelan said the original goal was
to provide wireless to all of downtown and to visitors. It’s still a goal to
provide a free service “for those who
are less fortunate and those who are
visiting the city to make it more of a
user-friendly city,” he said.
Meanwhile, Texas-based Xanadoo
.com plans to introduce wireless Internet to Springfield early next
month using a technology similar to
that used in cellular communication.
Springfield is the company’s fifth
market, and work has started on a retail outlet in Prairie Crossing. Packages will start at $14.95 for high-speed
wireless with download and upload
speed of 128K. Xanadoo’s signal will
cover Springfield, and it will have a
tower in Chatham.
market later this year.
Donelan said city officials have
had concerns that the technology is
changing so fast that providing wireless Internet using Wi-Fi technology
might not be the best avenue.
“What I see coming, and not necessarily just for Springfield, is changing
wireless technology,” Donelan said.
“And companies will continue to bundle their services and provide discounts for wireless and cable TV and
phone service.
“There are advantages to being
connected to wireless, and it is important to work with private companies
to accomplish that,” Donelan said.
The AT&T plan would have used
nodes to transmit the wireless signal,
but anyone can buy a wireless hub
and connect to DSL or broadband
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DOUG SLATER
President
P.O. BOX • VIRDEN,
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E-MAIL: truss@royell.net
OWERS
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SPRINGFIELD, IL • 3360 TERMINAL AVE • 866-965-5618
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Springfield, IL
217-522-5772
Established 1955
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Large selection of NEW manufactured
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A Manufactured Homes Community
We are Springfield’s only secure document destruction company.
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217-629-7076
3200 & 3500 N. Dirksen Pkwy
Springfield 217-523-4980
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Valid at all Brahler Lube Centers
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Coupon Expires 12/14/07
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5240 S. 6th St. Frontage Rd. East
JUST 2 MILES SOUTH OF ROCHESTER ON CARDINAL HILL ROAD
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• Genetic & Medical
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• Turbans
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& Styling Products
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IL LIC #440000325
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217/522-1047
Mon-Fri 8 to 1 &2 to 6
Sat 8 to 1, Closed Sun & Holidays
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Dal Acres West
2508 West Jefferson
217/793-3647
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We have several apartment complexes...
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for more info
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24 Hour Service
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Insurance Work
COLLISION SERVICES, INC.
2947 Old Rochester Road
Office: 217-525-0613
Towing: 217-525-3955
Fax: 217-525-5120
www.dicktaylor.com
e:mail: dtauto@dicktaylor.com
• Tree Trimming and Removal
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Tree &
Lawn
Service
“WHERE YOU’LL ALWAYS
SAVE $$$”
• Stump Grinding
• General Hauling
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2
Senior Discounts
1
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Reliable • Dependable • Prompt Springfield & Surrounding Area
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522-8855 • 24 Hr. Towing & After Hours 836-8855
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CONFIDENTIAL PAPER DESTROYING
BUY BACK
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3327 TERMINAL AVE.
MON-FRI 8-4:30
SPRINGFIELD
J&J
ELECTRIC MOTOR REPAIR SHOP, INC.
Air Conditioner Motors
Pool Pump Motors & Parts
2800 South 11th Street
Springfield, Illinois 62709
REMODELING
NEW HOMES
INSURANCE
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(217) 529-0015
• ROOM ADDITIONS
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www.larryrichieauctioneer.com
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IAL 0410000100
(217) 624-2901
585-9490
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IAL 0400000256
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LUCKY PHILLIPS
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1817 W. Jefferson
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www.lawautomotive.com
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(217) 698-6425 / (217) 741-2062
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realestate@doyleauctions.com
217-622-4470
•
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100 S. 6th Street
Petersburg, IL 62675
• Member of the NAA
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Specializing in children’s sewing classes, home school &
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525-1005
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family owned & operated
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698-8116
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Chatham 483-6434
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217-525-0924
We accept Visa & MC
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CALL (217) 788-8814
www.springfield-pccc.com
Pl. Lic. #058119116
CCCDI# XC 1955
Expires 12/31/07
9 AM - 5 PM
Closed Sunday
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Wrecking • Site Clearing • Demolition
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3720 Hollis Dr.
Springfield
Kenwood
■ We
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217-632-4400
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4690 PEC Road
217-546-2500
Fax 217-546-8131
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•
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www.midstategymnastics.com
exp 12/15/07
■ Deal
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Recreational Classes (2 Yrs & Up)
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Private Lessons • Tumbling Classes
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O’Dell’s
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(217) 544-HEAT • Fax: 544-8965
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3445 Liberty Drive
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217-698-3535
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10729 DARNELL RD. • DAWSON 62520
Roofing License #104-008415
217-523-3973
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A sincere thank-you to our friends and everyone for
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We are here to serve you.
William L. Gaule
Realtor-Auction Service
Chatham, IL 217-483-2484
PAGE
22A
COMMUNITY / OUTLOOK 2008
Study planned for Capitol complex
By DOUG FINKE
STATE CAPITOL BUREAU
“WE’RE DOING a
Within a few years, the face of
the Capitol complex in downtown
Springfield could be reshaped.
It could include a major new
state office building, demolition of
one or more existing buildings
and more green space.
Or, it could look pretty much
the same as today — if a lack of
funding scuttles plans for the area,
as has happened so often has in
the past.
One thing is clear, though.
Given the money, state officials
would like to see major changes in
the area bounded by the Third
Street railroad corridor and Washington, Cook and Pasfield streets.
“I think overall the layout of
the campus can be improved,”
said Capitol Architect Don
McLarty. “There’s not any green
space. Pedestrian circulation,
parking. All of that needs to be improved.”
Toward that end, the state has
hired DeStefano and Partners Ltd.
of Chicago, along with urban planning experts Wallace Roberts &
Todd of Philadelphia, to analyze
what works and what doesn’t in
the Capitol complex and develop a
master plan to guide development
complete analysis to look
at what it’s costing to
operate the building,
what it would take to
repair it and bring it up
to (modern building)
code and what it would
cost to replace the
building.”
— DON McLARTY,
CAPITOL ARCHITECT
for years to come. It’s projected
the entire planning effort will cost
about $4 million.
A component of the project is
what to do about the Stratton Office Building, the hulking edifice
just west of the Capitol that House
Speaker Michael Madigan, DChicago, once famously described
as “Stalinesque” in its aesthetics.
What finally happens with the
Stratton Building could radically
alter the appearance of the complex.
“We’re doing a complete analy-
5016 Wildcat Run, Springfield
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place the Stratton, they will have
to find a location for a new building. It presumably would be close
to the Capitol, although no site has
been selected.
It also hasn’t been determined
what will happen to the Stratton
Building itself.
Although demolition is an option, it would be expensive, because the asbestos would have to
be removed before the building
could be razed.
At some point, the state also will
have to decide the fate of the Armory building, which until recently served as headquarters for the
Illinois State Police. All but about
50 ISP employees have moved to
the former AIG insurance building
in Springfield.
The rest — who work with the
evidence vault and the ISP computer system — will move as soon
as space is prepared at the new
site, said ISP spokesman Scott
Compton.
Once the building is vacated,
the state will take steps to prevent
further deterioration, Grimes said.
As with the Stratton Building, it
would take millions of dollars to
make the Armory acceptable office space.
“It’s a dilemma you have with so
many buildings like that,” McLarty
sis to look at what it’s costing to
operate the building, what it
would take to repair it and bring it
up to (modern building) code and
what it would cost to replace the
building,” McLarty said.
The study is due in February.
However, a proposed capital program for the state contains $100
million to either fix or replace the
Stratton.
Some space in the Stratton is
set aside for state representatives
to use while they are in Springfield, and many of them have
made it clear they want out.
The building is loaded with asbestos, the windows leak, the
heating and air conditioning system is decrepit, the electrical system needs upgrading for modern
office equipment, and the building
does not meet requirements for
disabled access or life safety
codes.
“We can’t just continue to pour
money into this building. There’s
so much wrong with it,” said Jan
Grimes, director of the Capital Development Board.
The state just spent $579,000 to
secure limestone panels on the
outside of the Stratton because
they were in danger of falling off
the building.
If state officials decide to re-
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said. “They are historic, but
they’re places that are awkward to
work with. It’s finding the right
way to utilize the building. Right
now, I don’t know of anybody who
can answer that.”
A couple of blocks west of the
Armory, at 222 S. College St., is
another building whose fate is already decided.
Best known in Springfield as
the former home of Play It Again
Sam’s bar, once a favorite hangout
of lawmakers, the building is now
used for state offices. At least for
now.
“That building is past its life
span. Everybody recognizes that,”
McLarty said. “The building is
going to go away. It is just bad
news.”
So far, the 222 S. College building has been spared because the
state doesn’t have the money to
demolish it.
During the next few years, the
state will spend about $65 million
on the Capitol itself, although the
public won’t see how that money
is being spent. It’s part of a multiyear project to replace the heating
and ventilating system in the Capitol.
“They’re getting rid of systems
that are about ready to fall apart,”
McLarty said.
fect
r
e
P
the
d
Fin
There will be benefit to taxpayers, though. McLarty said the new
system will be much more energy
efficient, and the improved ventilation system will help preserve
artwork and the elaborate painting
and plaster ornamentation
throughout the building.
The state is gradually restoring
public areas of the building to
their original appearance, with
historically correct colors and
stenciling.
The Capitol’s third floor and the
first-floor rotunda areas are completed. The first floor’s south corridor is next in line. More areas will
be completed as money is available, McLarty said.
Improving the Capitol complex’s appearance is one of
McLarty’s goals, particularly by
adding green space. One study
showed that 40 percent of the surface area in the complex is taken
up by parking. Another 25 percent
is streets and sidewalks.
“All you have to do is stand and
look out the window, and it’s parking lots as far as you can see,”
McLarty said.
“One of the weaknesses (of the
complex) is the abundance of asphalt we have surrounding all of
the buildings. I think we need to
green up the campus.”
me.
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Southwoods, 2-st w/quality, Mohan
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100 W. MAIN - Sherman, 4BR, 2BA ranch w/open flr plan, dramatic pillars, HW flrs, wetbar in fam rm, gas FP, Pella wndws, walk in closet! Huge kitchen....................$159,900
1508 HOLMES - Hawthorne Place, Totally renovated 3BR w/all new kit, new mn flr ba,
refin HW flrs, updated mechanicals, newer 2 car gar. ......................................$141,900
1302 LELAND - 3-4BR 2-st one block from Wash. Park, loads of updates, new furn 06,
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2048 MARLAND - Brick 1.5 story, 4BR, totally updated, new HW flrs, new tile in bath,
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2241 FAIRWAY - Pasfield Park Place, 3BR, 1.5BA, all new carpet, fresh paint, mn flr fam
rm, lg eat in kit, full bas, corner lot, lg 2 c gar. ................................................ $124,900
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1900 S. WALNUT - 3BR bungalow w/huge kit, mn flr ba remodeled, 2nd full ba in bas,
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OUTLOOK 2008
A G R I C U LT U R E A N D
M A N U FA C T U R I N G
PAGE
24A
AGRICULTURE, MANUFACTURING AND TOURISM / OUTLOOK 2008
Lincoln-Herndon law office to be upgraded
By CHRIS DETTRO
STAFF WRITER
With the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth approaching,
one site associated with his legal
career wants to bring Lincoln back
to life through his surroundings
and the people with whom he
lived and worked.
The proposed construction
spending in the state’s 2008 capital budget includes a $1 million
grant to the Illinois Historic
Preservation Agency to renovate
the Lincoln-Herndon Law Offices
State Historic Site at Sixth and
Adams streets.
“It will incorporate new information we have about Lincoln’s
“IF WE CAN be in the middle of it by 2009, the
Lincoln Bicentennial, that would be a goal. It will
be a great tribute to Lincoln in getting it right.”
— JUSTIN BLANDFORD, SITE MANAGER FOR
OLD STATE CAPITOL STATE HISTORIC SITE
law office and how and where he
worked,” said Justin Blandford,
site manager for Old State Capitol
State Historic Site, as well as the
Lincoln-Herndon site and Vachel
Lindsay’s home for IHPA.
The law office itself, rather than
being on the corner, would be
more accurately located at the
south end of the building.
When Lincoln and his partner,
William Herndon, practiced law in
the 1840s and ’50s, they rented
space from dry goods entrepreneur Seth Tinsley. His three-story
business will be recreated and interpreted in a way new to Springfield, Blandford said.
“It will be a living history site
when the building is done,” he said.
He also thinks it will be a dynamic economic development
tool. “More than 40,000 people
came to the site last year, and this
project will create new momentum,” he said.
“People will learn about the
lives of people who lived and
worked around Lincoln,” Blandford said. We want to bring to life
the other attorneys who worked in
the office.”
Interpreters dressed as clerks
and customers would guide visitors through the dry goods store.
The 1840s would be interpreted
through items Tinsley would stock
or sell.
For example, the importance of
the textile industry in the period
could be brought to life through a
bolt of cloth, and a link to the
slave trade could be made through
sugar and molasses. Visitors
would hear about the temperance
movement rather than just see
casks of rum.
“There would be several interpretations at the site, and visitors
could either stay longer or return
for another option,” Blandford
said.
“The delivery is based on storytelling and interpretation and it
might spill out onto the Old Capitol Plaza or the streets of Springfield,” he said.
Blandford sees completion of
the project as “several years out.”
He estimates it will require anoth-
er $7 million on top of the $1 million slated for the project in 2008
to complete the restoration and
renovation.
“There is a lot of work to squeeze
in,” Blandford said. “If we can be in
the middle of it by 2009, the Lincoln Bicentennial, that would be a
goal. It will be a great tribute to Lincoln in getting it right.”
The windows on the Sixth
Street side of the building originally were bi-fold doors that opened
up onto the street, for example.
If the Lincoln-Herndon project
is successful, Blandford said there
could eventually be a transitioning
of the Old State Capitol State Historic Site to a living history or costumed interpretation site.
Rich Saal/The State Journal-Register
More and
Officials
hope new
developments
such as the
Korean War
National
Museum,
a rendering
of which is at
left, will
complement
and lengthen
the stay of
people who
come here
to visit the
Abraham
Lincoln
President
Library and
Museum,
above.
MORE
to do and see
Tourism officials
seek ways to keep
visitors here longer
By CHRIS DETTRO
STAFF WRITER
There’s no doubt the opening of the
Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum in
spring 2005 provided a huge boost to
Springfield tourism.
But what do you do if the big dog — the
museum — starts hurting attendance at
some other area museums and attractions?
Bring even more museums and attractions into the mix.
“You can’t expand the hours in a day,”
said Springfield Convention and Visitors
Bureau executive director Tim Farley. “So
you try to keep people here longer.”
Springfield, instead of being marketed
as a place for a two- or three-day stay,
hopes to be seen as a place for a three- to
four-day getaway where there is plenty to
do during the entire stay.
“Lincoln will always be our No. 1 product,” said Kim Rosendahl, director of
tourism for the bureau. “But the (Lincoln)
museum is not going to sustain us for the
next 20 years.
“We’re certainly not where we need to
be,” she said. “We’ve turned the corner
with the museum, but now we have to market Springfield as a multiday destination.”
“If the Lincoln museum brought in another one million visitors and none of
them spent the night, we wouldn’t be
gaining any ground,” Farley said. “If we
merely bring in more people to see certain
sites, we’re not winning.”
Tourism officials will welcome the addition of three smaller, specialized museums to the city in the coming months.
The National Museum of Surveying is
expected to open next fall on the north
side of the Old Capitol Plaza. The building
also will house the Illinois Heritage Center, a consortium of several central Illinois
historical agencies, and the Under the
Prairie Archeological Museum, which is
moving from Elkhart.
The surveying museum, which is moving from Lansing, Mich., could draw thousands of surveyors from across the country, according to Bob Church, executive
director of the Illinois Professional Land
Surveyors Association.
Church said bringing the building up to
the newest building codes set back organizers from a planned spring opening. He
said the group is counting on assistance
from a downtown tax-increment financing district and a state tourism-development grant to help cover the cost of renovation. Supporters also have raised about
$200,000 in donations to help the National
Museum of Surveying pay off the
$800,000 purchase price of the building.
A Korean War National Museum also is
planned for the northwest corner of Fifth
and Madison streets. The 15,000-square
foot building will contain interactive exhibits in its first phase, estimated to cost
$4 million to $4.5 million. The overall
BLDD Architects
project cost is expected to be $18 million,
and organizers hope to raise $3 million by
the end of 2007 and have Phase I completed by 2009 to coincide with the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth.
“We’re proceeding well,” said Larry
Sassorossi, executive director of the Korean War National Museum. “We’re setting
up a steering committee to help us raise
the cash we need to get started and to
open up the doors to top corporations.
“I really believe we’ll have the $3 million we need to start by next spring, if not
sooner.”
Sassorossi said the museum decided
only in 2006 to leave Rantoul, where it has
a largely archival facility, and closed on
the land purchase in downtown Springfield in March.
“We’re going to be totally interactive,”
he said. “People are not just going to
come and stare at stuff.”
Activities surrounding the Lincoln bicentennial will begin in February 2008,
Farley said, and much of the convention
and visitors bureau staffers’ time next
year will be spent working on that.
Farley also looks at another project slated for completion in 2008 to give visitors
options.
Edwin Watts Southwind Park, situated
on 80 acres just south of Trevi Gardens
subdivision, is projected to open in fall
2008. The park is designed on the cutting
edge of handicapped accessible parks.
“It’s very activity oriented, with the
Springfield Children’s Museum, a programmed light and water show, fishing,
and trails where you can take a wheelchair,” Farley said.
“This represents real growth for Springfield,” he said. “We already have ADAqualified hotels, and this could open up
different types of conventions for us.”
Southwind Park also features an amphitheater, formal gardens, an eight-acre
“Great Lawn” for flying kites, Frisbee
tossing, etc., and Erin’s Pavilion, which
will house the Springfield Park District’s
special-needs programs.
The children’s museum and a proposed
YMCA building won’t be finished by 2008.
Both are planning to raise more money,
and groundbreaking for the museum may
occur next year while the YMCA facility
could be completed by 2010.
Springfield also has up-and-running
family attractions to supplement all that
history, Farley said, citing Kicks Family
Entertainment Center at 2744 S. Sixth
Street, which has a restaurant, more than
60 video and arcade games, and a 10,000square-foot indoor go-cart track.
Knight’s Action Park has long been a
popular destination in the summer
months, and Hill Prairie Winery in Oakford is part of an increasingly popular
agri-tourism segment, Farley said.
The coming months should see further
development of Route 66 as a historic and
tourism attraction as the Illinois Route 66
Heritage Project, a not-for-profit group
based in Springfield, works to develop a
master plan for the route.
Route 66 in Illinois was designated as
part of the federal scenic byway system in
2005. The road followed three major
routes from Chicago to East St. Louis totaling about 400 miles from 1926 to 1977.
“We’re the hub, with a lot of spokes,”
Farley said. “People go to nearby attractions and activities in the day but come
back to the hub in the evening.”
Tourism in Springfield, based on hotel
occupancy, has been relatively flat
through 2007. But it is still 7 percent
above pre-2005 levels, when there was no
Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum.
The number of visitors at the various
tourist sites is up 20 percent during the
same period, Rosendahl said.
Officials put the economic impact of
tourism in Sangamon County at $350 million, compared with $320 million in 2005.
That’s the largest growth of any area in
central Illinois, Rosendahl said.
Tourism officials also want to work on
adding evening activities for tourists.
“The downtown ghost walks have been
very successful, but we see a need for
more things for people to do in the
evening hours,” Rosendahl said.
OUTLOOK 2008 / AGRICULTURE, MANUFACTURING AND TOURISM
PAGE
25A
Attention turns
to details as stores
fill up downtown
Directing foot
traffic, improving
second stories
DSI’s new focus
By CHRIS DETTRO
STAFF WRITER
Crew members prepare the stage, sound and lighting for Blue Man Group’s performance at the Prairie Capital
Convention Center.
PCCC manager talks expansion
By BERNARD SCHOENBURG
POLITICAL WRITER
Tom Margedant became general manager of The Prairie Capital
Convention Center in January
2006, having worked at the building since 1979 — the year it
opened.
He said his philosophy is pretty
much the same as that of his predecessor, Judith Meiron, who had
the top job from 1990 until her retirement: “Try to stay on top of
everything and let the people run
their departments, and don’t put
your fingers in too much unless
they’re not doing their job.”
The building runs on rental and
ticket receipts as well as property
tax money from Springfield, Capital and Woodside townships.
Margedant does want to see
changes — more entertainment
and, he hopes, an expansion of
convention floor space that could
double the size of the center.
Here are excerpts from a recent
interview. Questions are paraphrased.
■ Tell me about the building.
The building opened in November
’79. We’re 28 years old. The building
seats a little over 7,000 for a concert;
for basketball around 7,600.
Right now, we have 42,000 square
feet of floor space on the main hall,
which we use basically for conventions and trade shows and concerts
and family entertainment. And currently, we are starting to lose convention business because of the size of
the facility.
■ What kind of expansion or
renovation are you talking about?
We’re looking to hopefully expand
so we can move some of the facilities
to the south of the building, close
Adams Street and hopefully talk to
the county about their parking lot.
We’re really not looking at expanding
seating of the building.
■ So the basketball arena would
stay, and you would just have another hall for exhibitors?
Yes. We would expand, and hopefully, it would all be connected.
■ What would be the change in
square footage?
We’d like to take it up to 75 (thousand) or 100,000 square feet.
■ Is there any kind of price tag
on that at this point?
that’s going to be ongoing for quite a
while.
Hopefully we have a capital bill in
the legislature right now. We have
$4.2 million in there earmarked for the
convention center. . . . And that, in the
short term, will help a lot with doing
upgrades in the building that have
been neglected.
■ If you do expand, would you
have to ask taxpayers for funding?
We would probably have to do a
bond issue. And I’m sure we would
have to have a feasibility study done
and . . . we would ask for them to
come up with some funding ideas.
■ In the short term, are we seeing more concerts or certain kinds
of conventions?
No. . . . Right now, we’re just trying
to look to see if we can get some kind
of support here in the city to get the
ball rolling.
We try to get a mix of everything.
Right now, we’ve been lucky (with
shows including Blue Man Group,
Casting Crowns, Dierks Bentley —
who is coming Nov. 16 — and Soulja
Boy).
■ There is a model in another
office here that shows a proposed
expansion, right?
■ Is the center producing
shows, or is the building only
being rented?
That was from 15 years ago. …
The corner doors . . . would actually
connect into the new building if we
went with that model.
Normally, it’s a rental. We do very
little of our own promoting. . . . When
it’s a rental, we’re assured of what
we’re going to get.
■ You’re talking about building
on if you can.What kind of time
frame are you talking for that?
■ How often should there be a
musical show here?
Well, if you start now . . . you’re
looking probably eight years before
you could open the doors if everything went smooth. So that’s a project
■ Has there been any change in
center operations since the opening of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum?
No, not really. I mean we haven’t
seen any pickup in business or anything like that. I’m sure it’s a great advantage to have it here with conventions coming for spousal things to do,
for them to go and look through it.
■ There was opposition to the
building when it was constructed.
What’s the public perception now?
I think most people . . . have come
around to knowing that the building is
here and is a benefit to the community. I mean it helps with the value of life
here in the city. No longer do the people have to go to St. Louis or Champaign or Chicago to see a show. . . .
And we do bring quite a few dollars
into the community with the convention business.
About 90 percent of the storefronts in downtown Springfield
are occupied. Eight new businesses opened in the area in
2007, only one of which replaced a previous business.
“That’s good,” said Victoria
Clemons, executive director of
Downtown Springfield Inc.
So the downtown’s organizations major goals for 2008 may
be somewhat different than in
years past, where the big push
was to fill those storefronts.
“I think downtown retailers
are holding their own,” she
said.
The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum obviously has
generated significant crowds,
but Clemons doesn’t think
those crowds have necessarily
translated into sales for businesses south of the museum
other than restaurants.
In an effort to correct that,
DSI Inc. is working on having
signs installed directing people
from the edges to the center of
downtown.
“They’ll start at the museum
and its parking garage pointing
south,” she said. “There’ll be between 30 and 40 signs at about
eight different entryways into
the city.” The signage will be
closer to downtown, not just off
interstate highway exits into
Springfield, she said.
Clemons said the addition of
art galleries downtown has
helped generate foot traffic, and
in that same vein, DSI has been
exploring the creation of an antiques district.
“We could do one street and
dedicate it to collectibles and
antiquities,” she said. “That
would add a unique area.”
Downtown advocates also
are looking above the storefronts.
“We’re really pushing property owners and developers to
take on the upper-story development,” Clemons said.
Some of that development
has already been started with
new upper-story windows and
drywall installed in downtown
buildings. But many of the
places remain empty and unfinished.
“There just hasn’t been that
spurt, and TIF (tax increment financing) money won’t be available forever,” Clemons said.
“The idea is to get more people living downtown, and that
will attract services. But to attract residents, you need services. So you walk a fine line in
trying to determine which
comes first.”
Clemons also is pleased with
downtown’s ability to attract
new building.
“A huge indicator of a prospering downtown area is new
construction,” she said.
The $7.1 million Illinois Association of Realtors building on
South Fifth Street across from
the Executive Mansion and the
Illinois Primary Health Care Association building at 500 S.
Ninth St. opened earlier this
year. Springfield Clinic’s main
campus expansion and Isringhausen Imports’ 17,000-squarefoot BMW facility are under
construction and scheduled to
open next year.
“That shows someone isn’t
picking an open space that formerly was a cornfield,”
Clemons said. “Their first
choice was to come down here.”
DSI wants more of those
downtown lots to be available to
developers for new construction.
“We’re making a big effort
this year to encourage developers to build parking garages
versus surface lots,” she said.
“We’re losing out aesthetically
and economically (with parking
lots) because then we can’t fill
that spot with another building.”
“If someone buildings a
three-story garage on one lot,
that is better than having three
lots devoted to surface parking,” she said.
But the cost — about $22,000
per parking spot for garage
construction as opposed to
about $2,000 a spot for surface
parking — makes the decision
to build a garage “a huge commitment for a developer,” she
said.
“We’re trying to get public incentives for people to do that,”
Clemons said.
One area that has shown a
significant drop in the area during the past few years is the
amount of leased office space.
“We’ve been trying for three
years to get with the Blagojevich administration and offer to
be the Department of Central
Management Services’ real estate broker downtown through
our business retention and attraction committee,” Clemons
said. “We met with them a few
weeks ago, and they were excited about it.”
Clemons said downtown has
lost about 2,200 state workers
since the beginning of the current administration, although
400 Department of Human Services workers soon will move
into the Illinois Building at
Sixth and Adams streets.
Washington Street between
Fifth and Sixth streets was particularly hard hit, she said.
However, there should be a
wave of displaced workers
when the Stratton Building
eventually is torn down, she
said, since only those who perform legislative services may return to the building that replaces it. Clemons hopes those
people will end up in other
offices near the Capitol complex.
DSI also is looking to play a
role in bicentennial celebration
of Abraham Lincoln’s birth in
2009.
“We’re hoping to bring in
‘walldogs’ to do some mural
painting with empty alleys and
on some buildings,” she said.
Walldogs are wall-sign artists
who come in from across the
country and paint on of the
sides of buildings.
“It can have an effect on both
image and safety,” she said.
“It’s a quirky project, but I think
it has a lot of potential.”
Jacksonville and Atlanta in
Logan County previously have
had “walldog” work done, and it
has been well received, she
said.
.FM0$SFBN%POVUT
We’d like to see four or five concerts a year of different types. We’re
probably averaging three or four. Five
or six would be great. That would give
you one every two months.
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PAGE
26A
AGRICULTURE, MANUFACTURING AND TOURISM / OUTLOOK 2008
Decline of manufacturing
businesses has been steady
By CHRIS DETTRO
STAFF WRITER
T.J. Salsman/The State Journal-Register
Although prices of corn and soybeans are high this year, they aren’t necessarily profitable because farmers are paying
more to produce crops.
Farming numbers up
By CHRIS DETTRO
STAFF WRITER
Although official U.S. Department of Agriculture numbers
won’t be available until February,
Jim Burge figures he’s safe in saying that Sangamon County “has
seen a tremendous yield” of corn
in 2007.
“It’s not a stretch to say it’s over
200 bushels per acre,” said Burge,
Sangamon County Farm Bureau
manager. “There’s been a large,
large volume of corn coming in at
relatively high prices.”
However, the costs of raising
that corn have risen dramatically,
making farmers’ margins even
tighter, he said.
The cost of nitrogen for fertilizer has gone up phenomenally,
about doubling over the past three
or four years because of world demand for natural gas, he said.
Prices for diesel fuel and propane
needed to dry the crop also have
increased.
“And when you have higher
prices and higher yields, rents and
the price of land goes up,” he said.
“A bag of seed corn to plant three
acres or less may cost $170. When
you start adding all these things
up . . . ”
Farmland prices also are going
only one direction, he said, and
that’s up.
“As yields and prices increase,
so does the cost for whatever it
takes to produce that crop.”
“Some farmers will probably
Corn prices high,
but so are costs
of seed, fertilizer, land
make less money than they would
in a lower-priced market,” he said.
The corn crop has come in early
and often across the country, leaving mounds of corn on the ground
at elevator sites as the elevators
waited for the transportation industry to keep pace.
Yields for soybeans have been
good in Sangamon County, too,
Burge said.
“Yields have been average to
slightly above,” he said. “Markets
have remained strong.”
Fewer acres of soybeans were
planted in 2007 in Illinois and
across the United States because
of demand for corn for ethanol
plants and the accompanying increase in corn prices.
Soybeans were planted on 64
million acres across the United
States in 2007, down from 75.5
million acres last year, according
to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
In Sangamon County, acreage
has shifted dramatically toward
corn, particularly in the last year,
Burge said. He estimates that
about 70 percent of Sangamon
County farmland is used for corn.
“Ethanol has had a significant
impact on it, but perhaps less than
some would want to portray,”
Burge said.
He cited exports to other markets and a tightening of world
corn stocks as other reasons farmers are growing more corn.
There is no doubt about the
sheer volume of corn needed to fill
the needs of the biofuels industry,
but some think the ethanol boom
has reached its peak.
Soaring construction costs compounded by high corn prices have
increased operational expenses
for ethanol plants, and the price of
ethanol has been slipping because
of a market glut.
Illinois Corn Growers Association spokesman Mark Lambert
said state regulators have approved more than 40 permits for
ethanol plants and have 17 more
pending, but supporters still expect a shakeout in the industry.
Extended legislative session has positive side
By DANA HEUPEL
STATE CAPITOL BUREAU
This year’s seemingly endless
legislative session may be adding
some shine to Springfield’s
tourism industry.
The General Assembly schedules its spring legislative session to
adjourn by May 31. But this year,
the spring session has lasted
through the summer and fall while
the governor and the legislative
leaders bicker over the state budget, health care and other issues.
The extended session, though,
may help businesses.
“On the tourism side, it would
have a positive impact on our
economy in a number of ways,”
said Kim Rosendahl, director of
tourism for the Springfield Convention and Visitor’s Bureau.
Legislators, lobbyists, corporate
executives and rally attendees have
continued to come to Springfield
while the legislature is in overtime
session, she said. They stay in area
hotels, eat at restaurants and purchase gasoline and other goods
and services while here.
At some hotels, Rosendahl said,
legislative-related visitors make up
25 percent of their business.
“The extension of that over a
couple of months would have a
positive effect,” she said.
“State government, as a stable
employer, is a plus for the city,”
said Kent Redfield, a political science professor at the University of
Illinois at Springfield. “State government could be a huge asset to
Springfield if we’re doing things
right.”
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Developers of a proposed
ethanol plant near Waverly have
said they remain committed to the
project, even as other ethanol
plants have stalled. But the project
remains tied up in court after a
group of residents sued to stop the
project.
Burge says that margins have
been tighter, and demand not as
strong as anticipated for ethanol.
“There was a slowing of companies putting in E85 pumps after
Underwriters Laboratories
dropped its safety certification of
the pumps,” he said. “But UL has
since recertified them, and we
should see more pumps going in
and demand for E85 going up this
year.”
“Projections over the long haul
are tremendous for ethanol,” he
said.
Many local employers will
argue that Springfield is a good
place for manufacturing businesses, with plenty of land, a
skilled workforce and access to
two interstate highways.
But the reality is, there’s just
not a lot of it.
Manufacturing employment
in the Springfield area has declined steadily over the past 10
years, from about 4,400 in 1997
to 3,300 in 2006, according to the
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“Springfield isn’t a huge manufacturing town,” said Mike
Farmer, the city’s director of
economic development. “For a
city our size, the wedge is small.
We’d like to see it wider, but
we’re glad to have what we
have.”
Some positive news came
this year when Simplex Inc., a
manufacturer of products used
in electric-power generation
and fuel-supply systems, finished consolidating local operations at a location off Wabash
Avenue and Interstate 72.
Simplex, which employs
about 150 people, consolidated
from 13 buildings at four
Springfield addresses to the former Phoenix International/Illini
Technologies building. The
building had been vacant since
Phoenix moved its electroniccomponent manufacturing business to Fargo, N.D.
But on the minus side,
DICKEY-john Corp. of Auburn
announced that an undetermined number of manufacturing jobs will be gone from the
county by the end of 2008.
DICKEY-john, which makes
electronic components for the
farm industry, has about 300
Auburn employees, making it
one of the largest manufacturers in Sangamon County.
The company plans to outsource manufacturing operations within the United States in
an effort to hold down costs and
keep up with demand in a
booming farm economy. Engineering, assembly, product testing and administrative operations will remain at the Auburn
facility.
Simplex president Tom De-
brey has indicated his company
wants to expand the building
for one part of the operations,
adding on 6,000 square feet to
7,000 square feet. The company
expects to expand into the five
acres east of the current building at some point.
Converting the Phoenix
building from a facility designed for a single line of manufacturing to multiple processes
took a huge investment in
equipment and infrastructure.
Simplex has invested in electric forklifts and is putting in a
wiring work center. It also has
installed a five-step, state-ofthe-art immersion tank system.
Dick Poynter, chief financial
officer at Nudo Products and
head of the Land of Lincoln
Workforce Investment Board,
said his company is doing well.
“From our point of view,
we’re happy with the way
things have been going,” he
said. “We’re looking for steady
or slightly increasing employment. We have some new products we think are going to increase our business a little bit.”
Nudo Products employs
about 135 people, plus a number of temporary employees “to
smooth out the peaks and valleys” of demand, Poynter said.
The company manufactures
laminated sanitary panel systems for agricultural, commercial and institutional use, plus
other fiberglass and reinforced
plastic panels.
Solomon Colors Inc. also is
finishing up a $2.5 million expansion of its manufacturing facility on Color Plant Road.
Solomon, which makes coloring products and dispensing
systems for the concrete, readymix and masonry industries, expects to triple production by the
end of this year or early 2008.
It is one of two companies
that supplies decorative flooring
used in new Wal-Mart stores,
and that’s one of the reasons for
the expansion.
The employee-owned firm,
which employs about 100 at its
Springfield operation, completed the first phase of its 80,000square-foot expansion this summer and plans to complete the
second phase by the end of the
year.
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OUTLOOK 2008 / AGRICULTURE, MANUFACTURING AND TOURISM
PAGE
27A
New park to bring wind of change
Plans center
on accessibility,
environment,
unusual features
By JOHN REYNOLDS
STAFF WRITER
Springfield Park Board President Leslie Sgro thinks the district’s newest park will be raising
eyebrows well beyond Springfield
and when it opens in late 2008 or
2009.
The 80-acre Edwin Watts Southwind Park will be fully handicapped accessible from the
ground up, and one of the main
buildings, Erin’s Pavilion, will be
as environmentally friendly as
possible. Plans for the building in-
clude geothermal heating and
cooling, solar panels, wind turbines and the use of recycled construction materials wherever possible.
“(The new park) is going to be
huge not only for the park district,
but also for the entire Springfield
community and the region,” Sgro
said. “This is going to be something truly unique and special.”
Edwin Watts Southwind Park is
under construction off Second
Street, just south of the Trevi Gardens subdivision. Funding is being
provided by the Springfield Park
District, as well as individual and
business donors. Plans call for
several unique features in the park
such as a lake with a dancing
water fountain.
Erin’s Pavilion, which will overlook the lake, will be used for programs for people with special
needs, and its design will go well
beyond the minimal requirements
of the Americans with Disability
Act.
In addition to wide hallways and
handicapped accessible entrances,
for instance, the pavilion will have
special lighting designed for people who have autism.
Butch Elzea has been leading
the fundraising effort for the new
park, and the pavilion project is
close to his heart. It is named after
his daughter, Erin, who had an enzyme deficiency that caused her to
be confined in a wheelchair. She
died in April 2000 at the age of 17.
This past summer, Elzea said
experts had told him that the environmentally friendly design could
be accomplished within the construction budget, and the building
would have lower utility costs than
a traditional building.
Construction of the pavilion
should be completed by some time
in 2009.
Several other projects at the
new park already have been completed or nearly finished.
During 2008, people will see a
lot of activity near the lake as
Erin’s Pavilion takes shape and
other projects begin.
“The fishing piers will be built,
and the deck around the pavilion
will be installed. Some of the bathrooms will also be installed,” Elzea
said.
Like Erin’s Pavilion, the park is
being designed as a fully accessible facility.
The park’s 21/2 miles of pathways
will be paved, and there will be
wheelchair-accessible golf carts
available.
Also, five free-standing respite
spots will have a room to cool off,
and along with the standard male
and female restrooms, there will a
third kind where a caregiver can
take someone of the opposite sex.
As work at the park proceeds
next year, two other groups, the
Springfield Children’s Museum
and the Springfield YMCA, will be
in fundraising modes. Both plan to
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Photo taken November 19, 1907
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elevator in 1907 had a storage capacity of under 12,000 bushels. The September
13, 2007 scene shows 20 loads of corn being delivered to Farmers Elevator which
now has a storage capacity of over 6 million bushels. Farmers Elevator has
constructed a shuttle train loading facility on the BNSF railroad and is shipping
several million bushels of corn per year to cattle feeding facilities in Texas and
Mexico. The Farmers Elevator train loading facility has proved to be an excellent
market for local farmers and elevators. During this record harvest, Farmers
Elevator on some days had over 400 semi-truck loads of corn delivered.
Photo taken September 13, 2007
Max Bittle/The State Journal-Register
Genevieve LaBelle, left, and Anne Wichterman were
among the volunteers from Springfield High School who
helped plant trees at Edwin Watts Southwind Park.
build new facilities at Southwind,
but neither expects to start construction next year.
The children’s museum plans to
spend 2008 and 2009 raising
money, and doesn’t plan on breaking ground on a new building until
sometime in 2010.
The YMCA hopes to break
ground on a new facility in 2009.
Several local businesses and
donors are helping to offset the
cost of the new park.
Steve Halverson of Halverson
Construction, Ray Roland of
Roland Machinery and Mike
Zahn, president of Operating Engineers Local 965, and his team already have donated some $1 million worth of equipment and labor
toward development of the park.
Elzea said he’s still looking for a
donor or donors to fund what is
planned as one of the most unusual features of the park, a dancing
fountain such as the one in front
of the Bellagio in Las Vegas.
Other projects to be funded by
donations include the “World’s
Tallest Windmill,” which will be at
least 1191/2 feet tall. It will be a traditional windmill, as opposed to a
modern wind turbine, and will run
pumps that keep water flowing
into the “Babbling Creek” that
feeds the lake.
Another feature, just north of
the windmill, will be the Selvaggio
Great Lawn Gateway, two 25-footby-50-foot steel arches replicating
arches that originally were part of
Chicago’s 1893 Colombian Exhibition and were moved to downtown
Springfield at the turn of the century.
Mike Stratton, executive director of the park district, has said it’s
difficult to put a price tag on the
park because so much is being donated.
He agreed with Elzea’s estimate
that if the park district had to buy
everything, including the land, it
would cost $35 million to $40 million, including the proposed
YMCA building and children’s
museum.
So far, the park district has
committed about $7 million in
public money toward the park, including a $4 million bond issue to
build Erin’s Pavilion, about $2.6
million in capital dollars and a
$400,000 grant from the Illinois
Department of Natural Resources.
Stratton said the park could
open in late 2008, even if Erin’s
Pavilion is not yet completed. Before taking that action, however,
the board would have to make
sure that construction equipment
didn’t pose a danger to the public.
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OUTLOOK 2008
E D U C AT I O N
CAREERS
AND
OUTLOOK 2008 / EDUCATION AND CAREERS
PAGE
29A
LLCC course
prepares students
for apprenticeship
By CHRIS DETTRO
STAFF WRITER
A new pre-apprenticeship program aimed at
connecting minorities, women and non-traditional students with labor unions already has
paid off for at least half of the first class.
Lincoln Land Community College, in cooperation with local unions and the Greater Springfield Chamber of Commerce’s Q5 campaign,
began the pilot program to attract and prepare
students to enter union trades this fall.
The intensive seven-week HIRE (Helping Insure Readiness for Employment) Education
course addresses math
for trades, job readiness
skills and technical
OF THE 13
skills. Four weeks are
spent in the classroom
STUDENTS
and three weeks in a laboratory setting studying
topics such as shop and
tool safety.
Of the 13 students enrolled in the initial class,
six already have accepted
apprenticeship positions
with local unions, and
three more have had interviews and tested since
those six were hired, said
Julie Rourke, LLCC
work-force development program coordinator.
“The few who are left will be testing in the
near future,” she said. “They’re just waiting for
testing to open again.”
The program was made possible by an 18month, $300,000 grant from the state Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity.
The six-hour-per-day classroom section of the
course is taught at LLCC’s East Springfield
Learning Center, 1507 E. Cook St. The first session began Sept. 17, and the program will be repeated in the spring and summer semesters.
Rourke said more than 50 people have signed
up for orientation for the second go-round, which
begins with the spring semester on Jan. 23.
The idea is to have students who complete the
course prepared to enter into union apprenticeships. It appears to be working.
“I think it’s going pretty well being the pathway for them,” Rourke said. “Everybody was
watching to see where it would go and what
kind of follow-through there would be.
“The unions are doing their part in hiring
those students,” she said. “I think it’s working
very well.”
To be accepted into the program, students
must be at least 19 years old and have earned a
high school diploma or GED. LLCC is working
with the college’s adult education program, the
Veterans Administration and other agencies to
identify candidates.
“The inside knowledge of the various crafts
and skills needed for each trade can be obtained
from this cutting edge education while giving
students a chance to select a career from the
many international unions,” said Brad Schaive,
business manager for Laborers’ Local 477 and
chairman of the Basic Crafts Council of MidCentral Illinois.
Gary Plummer, president of the Greater
Springfield Chamber of Commerce, said the
program is an opportunity to grow the community’s work force and offer people opportunities
for “stable, lifelong careers in the trades.”
Unions represented in the agreement include
Iron Workers Local 46, Sheet Metal Workers
Local 218, Operative Plasterers and Cement Masons Local 18 of Central Illinois, Painters District
Council 58 Plumbers, Steamfitters and Refrigeration Fitters Local Union 137, International
Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local Union
193 AFL-CIO, International Brotherhood of
Teamsters Local Union 916 and Laborers’ International Union of North America Local 477.
enrolled in the
initial class, six
already have
accepted
apprenticeship
positions with
local unions.
Superintendent Walter Milton Jr. and School Board President Erin Conley, second from left, talk to members of the Findlay family
outside their home.
Milton keeps eye on big picture
Advises thorough
planning for any
District 186 changes
By CHRIS DETTRO
STAFF WRITER
After just a few months on the job as
Springfield school superintendent,
Walter Milton Jr. is thinking big.
“District 186 has the potential to become a national model for urban school
districts in a major way,” he said.
Getting there, he said, starts with a
road map.
“I believe we have to be very purposeful as it relates to planning,” he
said. “That is the benchmark of effective leadership. We want everything we
do to be aligned and connected.”
Enrollment is holding steady when
compared to last year, according to a
mandatory sixth-day-of-school count.
From kindergarten through 12th
grade, the district’s student population
numbers 14,245, a slight increase from
the official 2006-07 school year count
of 14,186. Both numbers are down
from the two prior years: 14,656 in
2005 and 14,779 in 2004.
“We’re doing some very meaningful
things in the areas of curriculum and
instruction and in the social aspects of
the learning experience,” Milton said.
“We have to make the educational
process relevant to the lives of the children entrusted to us,” he said. “And at
the same time, we must take a rigorous
educational approach to prepare students for an ever-changing society”
when they leave school.
Milton, who came to Springfield this
year after 18 months as head of schools
in Flint, Mich., said he believes that all
children are natural learners.
He stressed the importance of developing students’ complex thinking skills
and teaching them to think analytically
and critically. Parental involvement is a
most important piece of the puzzle as is
involving the community, he said.
“We need the entire community to
wrap around what we’re doing,” Milton
said. “We can no longer operate in isolation.”
State test results announced in September led Milton to call for a restructuring of the three public high schools.
“I think it’s inevitable,” Milton told
the school board at the meeting where
results of state tests in reading and
math taken by students last spring
were presented to the board. “We’re
going to have to do something to really
make a bold statement.”
He didn’t offer specific restructuring
ideas but indicated some students
might benefit from more inspiring curricula. He said that he and his staff
need to do more research before proposing any plan.
The test results contained both good
and bad news, including some good
news at the high school level.
State tests measuring math and
reading proficiency are given to students in the third through eighth and
11th grades and are used to assess
whether schools and districts are in
compliance with the federal No Child
Left Behind Act. The law requires that
by the 2013-14 school year, 100 percent
of students at public schools that receive Title I funding meet grade-level
expectations in reading and math.
In the spring 2007 tests, 55 percent
of students were required to meet
those standards.
Many consider the state’s high
school exam, called the Prairie State
Achievement Exam, to be more rigorous than the Illinois Standards Achievement Test, taken by third- through
eighth-graders.
“We’re going in a good direction, but
we have some glowing gaps,” Milton
said of the No Child Left behind standards.
Many educators are embracing the
concept of globalization and the need
to prepare students for it, he said.
“We really have to develop thinkers
who can compete in a global economy,”
he said. “The only way to get there is to
raise the bar and eliminate the excuses.”
He suggested creating career academies to provide students experience
and exposure to specific careers.
For example, through partnership
with the medical community, students
who wanted to become medical doctors might be able to spend some Saturdays with physicians.
Catholic schools think strategy as enrollment drops
By CHRIS DETTRO
STAFF WRITER
All of Springfield’s Catholic grade schools will remain open next year, but that doesn’t mean there
won’t be changes ahead as the Springfield diocese attempts to stem declining enrollment.
Enrollment at the city’s Lutheran schools and at
Calvary Academy, meanwhile, appears to be holding
steady.
A strategic plan developed by a committee with
representatives from all the schools called for a host
of changes in the diocese’s seven Catholic grade
schools. It also recommended that Cathedral School
transfer its students to Little Flower School and St.
Aloysius students move to St. Joseph’s School as
early as the 2008 school year.
An independent board oversees an eighth Catholic
elementary school, St. Patrick’s.
But Bishop George Lucas told parents last month
after listening to feedback from parents and others
that no schools would close.
However, the plan also recommended standardized
tuition rates, alignment of curriculums with Illinois
State Board of Education learning standards, a more
unified approach to running the schools and marketing campaigns to up enrollment.
Catholic elementary school enrollment totaled
2,251 students this year, down 81 from a year ago,
said Jean Johnson, superintendent of schools for the
Catholic Diocese of Springfield.
Between 1999 and 2007, each of the Springfield
Diocese’s seven grade schools recorded drops in enrollment with overall rates ranging from 6.6 percent
at Christ the King to 63.6 percent at St. Al’s. Some of
the steepest drops occurred during the past two
years. St. Joseph and St. Agnes, which reported tiny
enrollment gains this school year, are exceptions.
Catholic high school enrollment — the only remaining Catholic high school in the city is Sacred
Heart-Griffin — is 858, compared with 1,001 in 2006.
However, the 2006 figure included 167 students at
Ursuline Academy, which closed at the end of the last
school year.
With SHG enrollment up only 24 students from last
year, obviously not all students who attended Ursuline elected to attend SHG this year.
“We wish that would have happened,” Johnson
said.
In fact, 40 of the Ursuline students are at Lutheran
High School, about 15 chose a “senior experience” in
a scaled-down Ursuline and others are attending public schools in Springfield and elsewhere.
Donna Squires, administrator of Calvary Academy,
said overall enrollment there, pre-kindergarten
through grade 12, is 338, including 81 students in the
four high school grades.
“We’ve been holding our own, which is good considering the economy and gas prices,” Squires said.
Calvary, sometimes a force in Class A boys basketball, is phasing in girls high school athletic programs
the next two years, she said.
Calvary’s junior high girls teams have been participating in Illinois Elementary School Association competition for only the past two years but won a state
championship in 7th grade girls basketball in 2006
and brought home a second-place trophy in 8th grade
girls softball this year.
“We’re very proud of those achievements,” Squires
said.
On the academic side, students in some Calvary
high school science classes are for the first time
learning with more than 100 other students in a remote, interactive classroom offered through Bob
Jones University in Greenville, S.C.
“We know we can grow slightly in enrollment, but
we are anxious to start some things on our other
property,” Squires said. “Hopefully, we’ll have some
announcements during the coming year.”
Lutheran High School started the year with 238
students, up from 206 last year. That includes the 40
transfers from Ursuline. Until that influx, Lutheran
High had been holding steady with an annual enrollment of about 200, said first-year principal Dan
Duensing.
“We still have some room,” he said, adding that the
school has accommodated as many as 260 students.
Lutheran had considered dividing duties between a
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for the business side of things, for several years.
This year that plan became reality. Duensing, who
had taught at the school for 15 years, assumed the
principal’s duties, and Curt Fischer, who was executive director at a Lutheran school in Nebraska, was
named Lutheran High’s first executive director.
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PAGE
30A
EDUCATION AND CAREERS / OUTLOOK 2008
Colleges offer chance to live ’n learn
Institutions
see expansion
of programs,
campus living
campaign and local labor unions
in a pre-apprenticeship program
to prepare minorities, women and
non-traditional students with skills
to enter union trades.
“We’ve also just started a pharmacy technician program,” Warren said. “We’re working on career ladders, where the whole idea
is to progress.”
Warren said welding programs
and heating, ventilation and air
conditioning programs in Springfield, Taylorville and Jacksonville
also are very strong.
“We have to look at space as
we’re looking at opportunities to
grow those programs,” she said.
By CHRIS DETTRO
STAFF WRITER
Higher education in Springfield
increasingly is being conducted in
more campus-like settings as both
the University of Illinois at Springfield and Springfield CollegeBenedictine University become
places for students to live as well
as learn.
Lincoln Land Community College and Robert Morris College
look to expand program offerings
as their enrollment shows slight
increases.
Robert Morris
College
University
of Illinois
at Springfield
At UIS, which welcomed its first
freshmen only six years ago,
Chancellor Richard Ringeisen
says the strategic planning
process, not a gaggle of new buildings, is the most significant thing
that has happened in the 61/2 years
he’s been there.
“We asked how best we could
be what we wanted to be and
came up with a vision statement to
be one of the top five small public
liberal arts universities in the
country,” he said. “We’ve kept our
eyes on that target.”
In 2001, the university began a
small freshman program called
Capital Scholars with about 100
honors students. A new curriculum for freshmen and sophomores
was developed, and by 2006, the
program had 250 freshmen. There
are 280 freshmen enrolled at UIS
this fall.
“Because we had all these freshmen, we had to have more housing,” Ringeisen said. Of this year’s
freshmen, 42 percent are from the
Chicago area and 30 percent from
Springfield and surrounding
towns, he said.
UIS officials expect enrollment
to continue to go up with records
being set this fall — 4,855 students
— and last fall — 4,761 students.
A residence hall scheduled to
open next fall will have a “green”
roof with a grass surface designed
to save on heating and cooling
costs.
The residence hall, probably to
be named Founders Hall, will include 22 single-occupancy units,
84 double-occupancy units, six accessible suites, five resident assistant suites and an apartment for
the resident director. In addition,
the structure will house the campus bookstore, a grill and classroom facilities.
The current Public Affairs Center bookstore will be converted to
additional dining space.
When Founders Hall is completed, between 1,100 and 1,200 students will live on campus.
“We’ve gone from having 300 to
400 students on campus six years
ago to more than 900 now,”
Ringeisen said. “It has changed
the feel of the place.”
UIS also broke ground for its research and educational field station at The Nature Conservancy’s
Emiquon Preserve in Fulton County earlier this summer. There, students will join professional scientists to study the restoration of the
Illinois River flood plain near Havana.
Recent additions to the campus of the University of Illinois at Springfield include the student recreation facility at the
top of the photo.
Construction of the station
building, which will include both
laboratories and classrooms,
began in July, and completion is
expected by the end of the year.
UIS’s newest on-campus building is The Recreation and Athletic
Center, which opened in September.
“Next we badly need to renovate the library,” Ringeisen said.
“That will be our next big request
of the state.”
He also sees a need for a bigger
public safety building as well as a
student union that likely will cost
$10 million to $15 million. Those
funds will have to come from a
capital fundraising campaign.
He said the goal at UIS is to “go
to 500 freshmen and then stop,”
and with that, grow to 6,000 students and stop.
Opportunities also have increased in the student activities
area, he said.
“We have theater groups, music
groups and athletic teams,”
Ringeisen said. “There are 75 student clubs compared with 20 six
years ago.”
“Being out here every day and
seeing this maturing university ...
people who haven’t been out here
in a year or two will be shocked,”
he said.
Springfield
College in Illinois
Springfield College-Benedictine
University also is taking steps toward becoming a residential campus. A year ago, the college acquired the former King’s Daughters Home at 541 Black Ave. and
has since renamed it Mueller Hall.
It opened this fall as a residence
hall for women.
The home, purchased by the
Post family of cereal fame in the
1860s, currently houses 26
women, although the school will
convert some rooms to double occupancy and increase occupancy
eventually to 50 students.
In summer 2006, Springfield
College renovated Mueth and
Hanlon halls on the south end of
the campus, turning them into
men’s dorms.
“The board of trustees will take
a look and decide at what level
does the campus want to become
a residential campus,” said Susie
Doddek, director of college advancement. “It’s not a matter of
having no residents, but a matter
of how many more do we want.”
The change in housing arrangements goes along with the college’s expanding academic mission. Since 2003, Springfield College has partnered with Lislebased Benedictine to offer bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the
Springfield campus. SCI previously was exclusively a freshmansophomore institution.
In 2003, it had 250 students,
compared with 950 in all programs today.
The college also has been using
a former Ursuline Academy building for administrative offices since
2006. Ursuline, a Catholic high
school, was acquired by Springfield College-Benedictine in 2005
and closed in May.
The college has converted the
Ursuline building that faces Sixth
Street to classrooms, a small gymnasium and a recreation area. It
also is using the gymnasium on
Eighth Street.
The older Ursuline building facing Fifth Street is empty and probably won’t be used by the college,
Doddek said.
“We hope to have a couple of
new bachelor’s degree programs
in the fall of 2008, including a
bachelor of science in nursing degree that’s already been approved,” she said. “There are a
couple of others that have been
proposed.”
Springfield College this year
also has a full-time campus administrator, Michael Bromberg, who
also fills the role of dean of academic affairs. Previously, an administrator came to Springfield
from Lisle once or twice a month,
she said.
Lincoln Land
Community College
Fall 2007 enrollment in credit
classes is 6,655 students, up about
1.9 percent from last fall, said college spokeswoman Lynn Whalen.
That’s significant because
statewide community college enrollment is down slightly, and
LLCC had decreases in enrollment
from 2003 to 2005, she said.
LLCC President Charlotte Warren said the college is devoting
more energy to work-force development, including working closely
with the Greater Springfield
Chamber of Commerce and the
Quantum Growth Partnership. It
also is cooperating with the Q5
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Robert Morris College, which
opened its Springfield campus at
3101 Montvale Drive in 1988, has
estimated a slight enrollment increase to 422 students at Springfield for fall 2007, up from 420 a
year ago.
The college also has added a
couple of degree offerings for
2007-08.
A Bachelor of Business Administration with a concentration in
health care management is new,
said Connie Esparza, vice president for marketing. Robert Morris
already offered the degree with
concentrations in accounting and
management.
It also has added an associate
degree in CADD/drafting this year.
The Springfield campus has
several athletic teams for both
men and women, including a
men’s hockey team, and added a
competitive women’s dance team
this year, Esparza said.
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OUTLOOK 2008
H E A LT H
PAGE
32A
HEALTH / OUTLOOK 2008
Memorial’s longest-tenured CEO retiring
By CHRIS DETTRO
STAFF WRITER
When Memorial Medical Center, one of the city’s largest employers, encounters 2008, it will be
with new leadership and a simplified strategic plan that focuses on
patients, employees and results.
Robert Clarke, who came to
Memorial 24 years ago, will retire
Jan. 1 as the longest-tenured CEO
in the hospital’s long history.
Edgar Curtis, a Springfield native who spent more than 30 years
working his way up in nursing and
management at Memorial and its
parent company, will succeed
Clarke as president and CEO of
Memorial Health System. Curtis
currently is chief operating officer.
“We’re really pleased they’re
promoting from within,” said
Mitch Johnson, senior vice president for marketing and planning
at Memorial Health System.
“There are a lot of growth opportunities for a lot of people, but
there also is a lot of change to
manage.”
Memorial has already undergone some changes this year with
more to follow.
In the area of patient care, the
hospital added a dual-source CT
scanner, which uses two X-ray
sources to provide faster and
clearer imaging without the need
to slow a patient’s heart.
Located between the two trauma rooms in the emergency department, the CT scanner is so fast
Clarke has overseen many recent updates
to hospital facilities; Curtis to continue with more
Clarke
area, he said.
In an effort to consolidate services, Memorial opened its new
17,000-square-foot admission and
testing area on the first floor “as
close to the front door and parking
as you can get,” Johnson said.
The area consolidates several
patient services, including outpatient lab testing, select cardiology
outpatient testing and nursing admission of patients undergoing
surgery, cath lab and radiology
procedures. It includes 29 treatment bays and nine outpatient
rooms for lab and pre-admission
services.
The former admitting unit was
on the second floor.
Memorial acquired the former
IBM Building at 2401 W. Jefferson
St. and moved some computer and
recordkeeping functions to the
building, now called the Memorial
Health System Building. That
move helped free space for the admission and testing area.
“That will help us move toward
electronic medical records, which
is a long-term goal,” Johnson said.
Memorial Health System also
merged two of its affiliates — Visiting Nurse Association of Central
Curtis
that if a patient is having a heart
attack, it can take pictures faster
than the heart beats, eliminating
the need to medicate to slow the
heart beat, Johnson said.
The odds of survival without
heart muscle damage increase
considerably if the “door-to-balloon time” is less than 90 minutes,
he said. Memorial achieved that
time 100 percent of the time the
last half of 2007, the best percentage in the country, Johnson said.
The hospital also replaced one
of its heart catheterization labs
and installed state-of-the-art
equipment that allows doctors to
perform minimally invasive coronary artery bypass grafting. That
method utilizes slits made around
the heart to go between the ribs in
order to bypass clogged arteries,
rather than opening the chest
Illinois and Memorial HomeCare,
a durable medical equipment supplier — into Memorial Home Services with retail locations in
Springfield, Taylorville, Jacksonville and Lincoln.
“By making our complete line of
home health services and products
available through one entity, we
can better serve those who require
skilled nursing, other home health
services, home medical equipment
or hospice care,” said Doug Rahn,
vice president of post-acute services.
The hospital earned several
awards during the past year and is
aiming at a bigger prize in 2008.
It was one of only 225 hospitals
out of 5,500 nationwide to receive
Magnet Recognition for Excellence in Nursing Services from the
American Nurses Credentialing
Center. “It is a rigorous process to
apply for the award, and it is the
gold standard for nursing excellence,” Johnson said.
In May, it received a fivefold accreditation for its rehabilitation
services from the Commission on
Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities. It is only one of four
health-care organizations in the
world and the only one in Illinois
to receive full, three-year accreditations for five program areas for
rehabilitation services.
Memorial was ranked first in
Illinois and among the top 5 percent of hospitals nationwide for
overall orthopedic services and
joint replacement surgery.
The hospital received five-star
ratings from HealthGrades, an independent health-care rating company, for total knee replacement,
total hip replacement and spinal
fusion.
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The Mid-Illinois Medical District is bounded by North
Grand Avenue and 11th, Walnut and Madison streets.
commission.”
The district continues to develop on its own with major projects
at each of the three medical facilities, plus smaller retail and commercial developments and ongoing efforts to spruce up residential
neighborhoods such as Enos Park.
“We’ll put in place a detailed
plan of what we’ll do the day after
we have funding,” said Boer, a
banker and former Greater
Springfield Chamber of Commerce executive director. “When
we hire staff, we’ll have specific
things we want them to do.”
One of the grants derailed by
the governor’s veto would have
provided nearly $50,000 to study
traffic flow within the district, including conversion of major oneway thoroughfares to two-way
streets. It also was to be used to
plan streetscape improvements,
including decorative lighting, curb
upgrades and street-side benches.
Despite the slow going, Boer
said the medical district “has the
potential for providing the singlemost significant economic boost
for the region.”
“Health care and medical care
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“There are a lot of good things
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solutely fantastic job,” Boer said.
“They held five forums, conducted
a public consensus-building exercise and came up with a plan that
designates neighborhood areas for
preservation.”
The master plan has been approved, the marketing plan and
materials created and “we are officially broke as of August,” Boer
said.
“We’ve been very busy since the
time our ninth commissioner was
appointed in early 2004 through
mid-2006 and have been treading
water since then,” he said. “We’ve
been working hard to broaden
support for operational funds in
the General Assembly.”
The volunteer commission, Boer
said, realizes the district requires a
full-time, professional staff.
“It’s time to implement that
marketing strategy, and we need a
facilitator,” he said.
The $350,000 was in the state
budget but fell victim to Blagojevich’s veto, hence the efforts to
look at alternative funding.
“Ideally, we’d own real estate
and lease it to generate cash flow,”
Boer said. “It could be an incubator for research physicians at SIU
that could grow new business. Ultimately, that is a major goal of the
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Monument Ave.
Medical district official says
he won’t give up on funding
Despite losing $350,000 in getup-and-go funding by way of a gubernatorial veto, the Mid-Illinois
Medical District at Springfield
isn’t going to quit trying for state
funding to hire a professional staff
and implement its marketing plan.
“We haven’t given up on state
funding, and we never will,” said
Michael Boer, president of the
commission governing the district.
“But we are going to look more seriously as to where we might go to
find funds.”
The medical district, the second
in the state after one in Chicago
created in 1941, was created by
the legislature in early 2003.
It was originally conceived as a
concept to create a center for medical excellence by marketing St.
John’s Hospital, Memorial Medical Center and the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine as one to attract patients that
might have gone to Chicago or St.
Louis or to the Mayo Clinic in
Rochester, Minn.
But the legislation went beyond
a marketing strategy, allowing the
district to buy, lease, sell and improve real estate in the one-milesquare area and giving it the authority to issue tax-exempt revenue bonds for that purpose.
The district, just north of downtown, is bounded by North Grand
Avenue and 11th, Walnut and
Madison streets. It includes two
distinct neighborhoods, both hospitals and the medical school, and
about 4,000 people.
It is a state agency without taxing power and is run by an 11-person commission whose members
are appointed by the governor,
Springfield mayor and Sangamon
County Board chairman.
Recent legislation signed by
Gov. Rod Blagojevich renamed the
district from the Illinois Medical
District at Springfield to the MidIllinois Medical District. It also expanded the commission from nine
to 11 members and the district’s
program area to 10 counties.
Officials believe the new name
and additional commission members will emphasize the district’s
regional nature.
In fall 2004, the district received
two grants from the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic
Opportunity — one for $175,000 to
develop a master plan and another
for $125,000 to devise a marketing
strategy and create materials.
RTKL Associates, the firm hired
to develop the plan, “did an ab-
“We are on a crusade for quality
and performance improvement,”
Johnson said.
The hospital’s goal is to receive
a Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award from the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
“Only five health-care organizations have ever received it,” Johnson said. Memorial applied for the
Baldrige award this year and will
do so again in 2008.
It also applied for a Lincoln
Award, a statewide award that
uses the same criteria, and received a Lincoln silver award for
the second time.
Memorial plans to consolidate
its outpatient imaging services to
make it more convenient for patients and will build an air bridge
between the Baylis Building and
the new SimmonsCooper Cancer
Institute at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine.
Outpatient imaging services
such as X-ray and ultrasound will
be moved to the first floor of the
Baylis Building at Rutledge and
Miller streets. Those services currently are “buried within the hospital for outpatients,” Johnson
said.
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OUTLOOK 2008 / HEALTH
St. John’s plans both
major, minor changes
By CHRIS DETTRO
STAFF WRITER
Expect some changes at St.
John’s Hospital in 2008.
For one, Richard Carlson, St.
John’s chief administrator for the
past seven years and a top officer
for 17 years, expects his successor
to be named early next year.
“I’m committed to staying
until they find a
replacement,”
said Carlson,
who announced
his retirement
this summer.
But even with
Carlson
the changing of
the guard, the 530-bed hospital is
in the midst of a “major facilities
planning effort” that will involve
construction. Carlson said he expects that planning to be completed during the first quarter of 2008.
(The State Journal-Register reported in October that the hospital
is considering a $100 million renovation project that apparently will
focus on St. John’s 11-story “main
stack,” first built in the 1930s.)
“It will involve some construction, either new construction or
renovations,” he said. “That’s one
of the questions we’re trying to answer.”
“We’re about halfway through
the facility plan now, and when it
Top administrator
retiring; renovation
plans in the works
is finished, it will be made public,”
he said.
Separate from that effort, St.
John’s will be doing some shortterm construction, too.
“There is some minor work on
the drives, and we will be doing
work in the lobby and inside the
hospital,” Carlson said. “We’ll
probably move admitting to the
lobby. We have a large lobby and
really don’t need all that room for
it.”
There also will be renovations to
the surgery and adult intensive
care areas, but those will be invisible to anyone who is not a patient
or visiting someone in the hospital, he said.
St. John’s employs more than
3,100 people, and Carlson expects
that figure to remain about the
same next year.
“I see no major ups or downs,”
he said.
That wasn’t the case a year ago,
when during the fiscal year ending
June 30, 2006, St. John’s showed a
loss for the first time in its 130year history. A nationwide trend
toward less profitable outpatient
health care and increased competition in some of St. John’s more
profitable areas contributed to the
losses.
Following a financial review and
some downsizing, the hospital got
back in the black in fiscal 2007.
About 250 positions were eliminated, mostly through attrition,
and 84 people took early retirement. Only 17 people were laid off.
“Things have turned around
substantially” since those darker
days, Carlson said.
“I consider 2006 an aberration
— an aberration I don’t care to go
through again,” he said. “The current year has been very positive,
and I think 2008 will be more positive.”
The hospital’s annual revenues
exceed $420 million.
Carlson said St. John’s and its
partner, Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, are completing a strategic plan for St.
John’s Children’s Hospital.
“This will chart its course for
several years,” Carlson said. “Our
goal has been to create more of a
regional venue for the care of sick
and injured children.”
In August, St. John’s was
named one of nine pediatric critical care centers in Illinois and only
the second downstate.
“That’s one of the assets of having the children’s hospital,” he
said.
PAGE
33A
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October 2008
By CHRIS DETTRO
STAFF WRITER
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622665
An area that once hosted a
group of one- and two-story medical office buildings is sprouting a
new look.
Kindred Hospitals is building a
50-bed specialty hospital at the site
of the former Doctors Park complex, 701 N. Walnut St. The longterm acute-care facility is expected
to be completed by October 2008.
The three-story, $17 million hospital will eventually employ 150
people. Doctors Park was once a
thriving medical office complex
but became an eyesore after it was
vacated.
The 50-bed Kindred Hospital
Springfield will serve adult patients who are expected to stay an
average of 30 days each. Most patients will be transferred from St.
John’s Hospital, Memorial Medical Center and other hospitals
and health-care facilities up to 100
miles away.
The building, designed by Belli
& Belli Architects and Engineers
of Wheeling, will sit on the west
side of Walnut Street, facing east.
The main entrance will be along
Miller Street.
The building will have mostly
semi-private patient rooms, which
is common in the long-term acutecare industry.
The site will have 96 parking
spaces next to the hospital and 24
spaces on nearby land owned by
Kindred along Miller Street.
The facility received state approval in 2005 with the support of
Springfield’s two full-service hospitals.
Kindred Healthcare, a publicly
traded company based in
Louisville, Ky., operates 82 longterm acute care hospitals, includ-
Belli & Belli Architects
This rendering depicts Kindred Hospital, which is being
built at the old Doctors Park on North Walnut Street.
ing one in Sycamore, four in the
Chicago area and two in St. Louis.
It is the largest single operator of
the nation’s 400 LTACs, most of
which are for-profit endeavors.
LTACs treat patients who are
more stable than those in traditional hospital intensive-care units
but have unresolved medical problems. The patients may require
ventilators, wound care or other
care related to strokes, infections
or respiratory problems.
Although changes in the federal
Medicare program have meant
funding cuts for specialty hospitals, Kindred officials say those
changes don’t dampen their outlook for long-term acute-care
hospitals because of the company’s clinical model and infrastructure.
Medicare insured 70 percent
of patients in Kindred’s 82 LTAC
hospitals and accounted for 61
percent of Kindred’s $1.7 billion
in hospital-related revenue in
2006.
LTACs have increased in number because it makes financial
sense for traditional hospitals to
transfer patients to them.
Traditional hospitals often lose
money on Medicare patients who
need long stays because Medicare
usually pays a fixed amount, regardless of the length of stay.
Springfield-area patients who
may have qualified for Kindred
Hospital Springfield in the past
either stayed in a full-service hospital, were transferred to specialized nursing homes or had to travel to an LTAC in Chicago or St.
Louis.
Jack Shapiro, chief executive officer of Kindred Hospitals of Illinois, says Kindred already has
name recognition because of its
other hospitals in Illinois and St.
Louis and believes Kindred
Springfield will be able to market
its services to any hospital in Illinois.
Kindred has been considering
Springfield for a hospital for more
than three years. It received approval for the project from the Illinois Health Facilities Planning
Board in August 2005.
Construction was delayed by
discovery of a sewer line, which
resulted in Kindred redoing its design plans in accordance with a
Springfield ordinance that prohibits construction over such lines.
The project also was delayed by
bankruptcy proceedings involving
one of the owners of the land purchased by Kindred.
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34A
Company official says
things ‘going real well’
for psychiatric hospital
By CHRIS DETTRO
STAFF WRITER
New owners have a new vision for the former
Doctors Hospital on South Sixth Street.
Psychiatric Solutions Inc., a Franklin, Tenn.based company, in August started work on turning the four-story, 88,000-square-foot property
into an 80-bed psychiatric hospital for children.
PSI division president Jeff Bergren said the hospital, which will be called Lincoln Prairie Behavioral Health Center, expects to be open by February or March. It eventually will employ 200 people
and will draw patients from throughout downstate
Illinois.
“Everything’s going real well, and we’re still on
target for the first quarter of next year,” Bergren
said.
The hospital will treat patients ages 4 through
20 on the third and fourth floors. Bergren said the
first floor will house administrative offices, patient
assessment areas and possible outpatient services.
The second floor could be used for residential
care, where youths would receive 24-hour supervision for six to nine months at a time while receiving less intensive psychiatric care.
“You have an existing facility, a building that
has been fairly well cared for, and it’s being
brought back to life and will provide new jobs,”
said Mike Farmer, director of economic development for Springfield. “It adds to what we think is a
pretty impressive menu of health-care services
this community provides.”
Psychiatric Solutions, which operates close to
90 psychiatric hospitals in 31 states, anticipates
spending about $14.8 million, including a purchase price of $3.3 million and $11.5 million in
renovations, on the project.
Renovations to the 32-year-old building will include a new roof and air-conditioning system, as
well as new carpeting, flooring and wall coverings.
A sprinkler system will be expanded to cover the
entire building and security and safety features
common to psychiatric hospitals will be added.
The project, the only freestanding psychiatric
hospital for children in downstate Illinois, has the
support of local health-care organizations.
Memorial Medical Center will close its own 15bed children’s psychiatric unit when Lincoln
Prairie opens. Memorial officials think the new
hospital will bring more children’s mental health
services to Springfield.
Southern Illinois University School of Medicine
officials have indicated they will work with Psychiatric Solutions to bring more doctors specializing in child psychiatry to central Illinois.
Doctors Hospital filed for bankruptcy and
closed in 2003, costing about 400 people their
jobs.
Hospitals in other communities, including
Champaign, Granite City, Peoria and Quincy, argued to the Illinois Health facilities Planning
Board that the PSI project wasn’t needed, but the
board awarded a certificate of need in May.
The main campus of Springfield Clinic, at the forefront in this aerial photograph, spans Sixth Street.
Clinic spreads its wings
By CHRIS DETTRO
STAFF WRITER
The progress of Springfield Clinic’s $34 million expansion of its main campus likely has been followed
by more people than any other building project currently in progress in Springfield.
That’s because if you’re on your way downtown
from the south and take the usual route up Sixth
Street, you just can’t miss it.
Construction is under way on a four-story building
almost as large as the clinic’s main building at 1025
S. Seventh St. Included is a section that crosses over
Sixth Street and connects the existing structure to
the new one on the west side of Sixth Street.
Work on the connector building, which will provide 17 feet of overhead clearance, has required occasional closings of Sixth Street.
Springfield Clinic broke ground on the expansion
— part of a $40 million consolidation project — in
March and intends to be finished in August.
“The project is on budget and on time,” said Mark
Kuhn, chief administrative officer.
The 18-month project will result in a 115,000square-foot medical office building connected to the
existing clinic facility by the gateway span of approximately 65 feet.
The state-of-the-art medical complex will house
Plans to fill new building
with more than 200 new
employees in next few years
approximately 40 physicians in numerous medical
specialties.
The building initially will house 34 specialists in
ophthalmology, optometry, endocrinology, gastroenterology, allergy, dermatology and otolaryngology
with space for six more doctors. The site’s 550 parking spaces will increase by 230.
The project also includes significant renovation,
also under way, to the first and second floors of the
existing main campus structure. The clinic’s Ambulatory Surgery Center will nearly double in size, and
other services areas, including Prompt Care, radiology and the Oncology Infusion Unit, will be expanded
and improved.
The $6.1 million renovation project at the 140,000square-foot main building started in mid-February
and is expected to take 18 months.
To make room for the expansions, several doctors’
offices were relocated more than a year ago to the
new $27 million Springfield Clinic 1st office building.
The building, located at 800 N. First St. just east of
Memorial Medical Center’s main building, was constructed by Memorial for exclusive rental use by
Springfield Clinic. It was completed in May 2006.
During the next three years, the clinic, which employs about 180 doctors, plans to add 35 to 40 more.
The clinic expects to increase its 1,450 non-physician
work force by more than 200 employees in the next
few years.
Springfield Clinic was founded in 1939 as a merger of four medical practices at 421 S. Sixth St.
It moved to its current location — then a 60-room
medical facility — in 1952. That site underwent expansion in 1961 and again in 1967 and 1991.
In addition to the main campus and satellite facilities in Springfield, the clinic has offices in Sherman,
Hillsboro, Decatur, Taylorville, Lincoln, Jacksonville,
Gillespie and Carlinville.
It acquired property on four different blocks and
razed the American Red Cross building at 1025 S.
Sixth St., as well as more than a dozen other singlefamily homes and apartment buildings, to make
room for the current expansion.
BSA Lifestructures, an architectural firm from Indianapolis, designed the addition, and local construction company Harold O’Shea Builders will be the
general contractor and construction manager.
LINCOLN PRAIRIE BEHAVIORAL
HEALTH CENTER
Located in the heartland of Central Illinois, Lincoln Prairie
Behavioral Health Center will open its doors in Spring of 2008
in Springfield, Illinois. In an effort to serve families and
children in central and southern Illinois, Lincoln Prairie will
offer the following services as a resource to Illinois communities.
Artist rendering of Corporate Campus Expansion
✷ 80 Inpatient Psychiatric beds for youth ages 3-17.
✷ 40 Residential beds for long term placement.
✷ Array of outpatient programs including PHP, IOP
that will compliment and supplement the community
needs of Springfield.
✷ Physicians to monitor medications and treat
childhood behavioral and mental health needs.
Lincoln Prairie Behavioral Health Center is committed to
working with agencies, schools and other treatment providers
to form treatment teams on behalf of the patients served.
When working collaboratively to re-integrate the youth back
into their communities, success is, most often, the outcome.
Facility and Treatment Components include:
✷ 24 hour assessments and referrals
✷ Multi-disciplined Evaluations
✷ Behavioral Therapy
✷ Expressive Therapy
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✷ Individual, Group and Family Counseling
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OUTLOOK 2008 / HEALTH
PAGE
35A
SIU’s new ‘front door’
will be cancer institute
By CHRIS DETTRO
STAFF WRITER
When the $21.5 million
SimmonsCooper Cancer Institute opens its doors next summer, it not only will serve as a
multidisciplinary cancer treatment and research facility, but
will be “the front door” to the
ever-expanding Southern Illinois
University School of Medicine
campus in Springfield.
“It’s been a
long time coming,” said Dr. J.
Kevin Dorsey,
dean and
provost of SIU.
The new
three-story
building will
Dorsey
consolidate the
school’s cancer clinics along
with research and outreach service programs. Dorsey expects
the building, located on two
acres bordered by Carpenter,
Rutledge and Miller streets, to
open in July.
The 75 or so physicians and
basic science faculty involved in
the institute will deliver care with
a team approach that includes
oncologists, surgeons when necessary, dietitians and others.
“We will be able to deliver better care more quickly and get
better outcomes,” Dorsey said.
The institute also will provide
training for future physicians,
the mission of SIU School of
Medicine.
“It demarcates the SIU campus and will be the front door,”
he said.
Another planned SIU facility,
the Regional Center for Public
Safety, would make Springfield
only the second city in Illinois to
have such a facility. It also would
be important to the region,
Dorsey said.
The facility would train
health-care professionals from
throughout the region in a simulated hospital environment. It
would include simulated emergency rooms, surgical suites, obstetric facilities, intensive care
units and other areas.
Dorsey said SIU will follow
“WE ARE at the
forefront of clinical
practice and clinical
research, where those
people can be
surrounded by eager
learners. That is the
value-added of a
medical school.”
DR. J. KEVIN DORSEY,
DEAN AND PROVOST,
SIU SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
the model of the airline industry
and its flight simulators, using
simulation to create operating
room or delivery room scenarios
and otherwise prepare a physician, nurse or other health-care
professional for what they might
face in numerous real situations.
“It is a way to practice our
skills and to gain skills without
having misadventures along the
way,” Dorsey said. “Patient safety is a major issue right now.”
A capital spending bill approved this fall by the Senate set
aside $10 million for initial startup and operating expenses for
the project, which is a partnership among SIU, St. John’s Hospital, Memorial Medical Center,
Lincoln Land Community
College, SIU at Edwardsville
and the Springfield medical district.
The building also would house
the offices of the Springfield
medical district and space for
public educational programming.
“We’d like to be, within 18
months, walking into a building,” Dorsey said. “We know
what we want to do. We just
need to get on with it.”
This month also marks the
10th anniversary of SIU’s practice plan, SIU Physicians & Surgeons, which has grown from
125 doctors to more than 200.
“We’re bringing in cutting
edge, sub-sub-specialty people,”
Dorsey said.
He looks for more growth in
2008 but said it goes far beyond
being just “more of the same.”
“It is incrementally important
to Springfield as a medical center,” he said. “We are at the forefront of clinical practice and clinical research, where those people can be surrounded by eager
learners. That is the value-added
of a medical school.”
At 1,300 employees, SIU
School of Medicine is the seventh largest employer in the city.
Its enrollment of 288 students
has been stable since the 1970s.
SIU has about $24 million in
research grants in force, which
Dorsey said is a relatively small
amount for a research university.
“This is a big thrust for us,” he
said. “Research is proportional
to the kind of people you have
and the number of people you
have. We’re getting traction
there.”
He said the school has formed
an Office of Technology Transfer
to help expand that segment. The
office guides researchers
through processes that can take
years and involves the U.S.
Patent and Trademark Office and
Food and Drug Administration.
In 2006, the Springfield Combined Laboratory Addition
opened after sitting vacant for
more than 11/2 years during a
state budget crisis.
The five-story, 105,000square-foot building houses new
labs for SIU microbiology researchers and is a workplace to
about 100 SIU employees.
The Illinois Department of
Public Health, which had operated a lab in a connected building,
uses the new, $30.4 million
building’s third floor and the Illinois State Police’s regional
forensic laboratory soon is moving to the top two floors.
The medical school also this
summer received full accreditation for another eight years from
the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME).
Eight years is the maximum
length of accreditation awarded,
Dorsey said, and the committee
members who visited SIU in January noted no deficiencies.
Regency has been providing the
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comprehensive health care for more
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provided unmatched experience in
a continuum of service responding
to their residents’ medical and
personal needs, from respite care,
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FWAI Architects
A 200,000-square-foot campus is planned for just north of H.D. Smith’s current
headquarters in Park South, at Sixth Street and Stevenson Drive.
Ground yet to be broken
for H.D. Smith headquarters
By CHRIS DETTRO
STAFF WRITER
Although it has taken out a
building permit for a parking lot,
there isn’t much to indicate what
will soon start coming out of the
ground at the H.D. Smith Wholesale Drug Co. headquarters in the
Park South development at Sixth
Street and Stevenson Drive.
H.D. Smith Drug — one of the
country’s largest wholesalers of
pharmaceutical and related products — announced last spring it
will build a 30-acre, high-tech corporate campus and will ultimately
add about 600 jobs to its 200-person work force.
It will take four construction
phases over five years to complete
the project at an estimated cost of
$46 million.
Executive vice president Chris
Smith previously indicated the
first phase would be the aforementioned parking lot, estimated at
$100,000. The first building in the
expansion will take much of the
company’s existing parking to the
north and west of its current headquarters.
H.D. Smith facilities manager
Sandy Bellatti said she expects
ground to be broken for the first
building immediately north of the
corporate office on March 15, 2008.
“There were a lot of things we
had to get done beforehand,” she
said. “But we are working fast and
furious on the parking lot.”
City economic development
chief Mike Farmer called the H.D.
Smith expansion the “crowning
achievement” in economic development.
“It’s the largest job-generator to
hit Springfield in my lifetime,”
Farmer said. “They are a tremendous, homegrown company, and
we’re fortunate to have them in
our community.”
Final plans for the 200,000square-foot corporate headquarters are awaiting approval by the
Springfield-Sangamon County Regional Planning Commission and
the city council.
The Springfield City Council
has approved an economic development incentive package that includes $1 million from the Fiatallis-Park South tax incrementfinancing district at Sixth Street
and Stevenson Drive. The firm will
retain about $2.4 million in property taxes once the project is done,
and it also will get a break on city
sales taxes and utility rates.
Smith said plans are to break
ground this fall on the first building immediately north of the existing corporate office.
The expansion project is expect-
ed to create 500 construction jobs.
H.D. Smith has additional offices
on Robbins Road and a distribution
center on the south side of the city.
Bellatti said the company plans
to lease space on the west side of
Springfield “to tide us over” while
new space is under construction.
The company also expanded its
warehouse at 4650 Industrial
Drive this summer to increase its
distribution capabilities by 30 percent. That project was separate
from the headquarters campus expansion and is expected to add another 20 jobs in the next year.
The 16,000-square-foot mezzanine inside the distribution center
houses branded and generic prescription medications and home
health-care products for Midwestern retail and hospital customers.
The new upper level brings the
warehouse capacity to 78,000
square feet. Construction began in
early March, and the space became operational July 22.
H.D. Smith, which was founded
in Springfield in 1954, has distribution centers in California, Florida, Kentucky, New Hampshire,
New Jersey and Texas in addition
to Illinois.
It is the nation’s fourth-largest
wholesale distributor of pharmaceuticals with sales expected to
top $3 billion this year.
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PAGE
36A
623629
OUTLOOK 2008
COMMUNITY
P E T E R S B U R G
It holds
its OWN
Mayor remarks on
city’s self-sufficiency
local
By ANN GORMAN
LEADER
CORRESPONDENT
PETERSBURG — While many
Petersburg residents commute to
jobs in Springfield and other nearby
communities, hundreds work for
local government, schools and longtime businesses.
The Menard County Courthouse
— the centerpiece of the downtown
square — is surrounded by shops,
offices and restaurants. The city
also has grocery and hardware
stores and a full range of health,
auto and home stores and services.
Nearly a dozen churches are located here, and there is a library, post office and historical society museum.
Mayor Diane Kube acknowledged that a few downtown businesses have closed recently, and
Petersburg has lost its only manufacturing plant, Eaton Corp., which
produced manifold blocks, screw-in
cartridge valves and hydraulic remote control systems for customers
such as Caterpillar and John Deere.
However, Nikles auto dealership,
The Bean Counter coffee shop and
bakery, Family Video, Athens State
Bank, PASS arcade and skate shop,
and Petersburg Chiropractic have
opened, and Petefish, Skiles & Co.
Bank has built a new facility.
“You can find almost everything
you need,” Kube said. “We’re very
self-sufficient.”
Diane
Kube
At the heart of Petersburg’s downtown is the Menard County Courthouse.
Entrepreneurs Don Gillmore,
Dale Milstead, Dick Moss and
Kevin Thomas opened the RiverBank Lodge last year in the former
First of America Bank on Sixth
Street. Accommodations include 24
rooms — doubles, singles and an
extended-stay suite.
The town also has three bed-andbreakfast inns, The Oaks, Maple
Crest and The Branson House, and
motel-style rooms are available at
the Fast Stop on Illinois 97.
Menard Electric Cooperative’s
former downtown office building
will be the new home of Petersburg’s city hall and police department. Petersburg’s administrative,
zoning and water collector’s offices,
as well as the police department and
city council chambers, will relocate
when renovations are complete.
Porta High School’s Community
Problem Solvers intend to open an
art gallery in part of the facility.
Although commercial development has been on the upswing in
recent years, Kube said Petersburg
still lacks industry and that “we
could always use more retail stores
to service our residents and generate additional sales tax for the city.”
Petersburg Chamber of Commerce president Betty Winchester
said there’s also a need for more
parking in the business district.
Merchants and tourism officials
have been working to draw visitors
to downtown from nearby Lincoln’s
New Salem State Historic Site by
organizing special shopping events
and festivals, distributing brochures
and broadcasting radio and television ads.
“We have so much to offer,
whether you want to take a daytrip, spend the night or live here,”
Winchester said.
TITLE: Mayor
AGE: 63
FAMILY: Husband, John
Kube; children, two grown
daughters, Brenda and
Barbara
EDUCATION: University of
Wisconsin, two years
OCCUPATION: Retired
legal assistant
PETERSBURG’S
BIGGEST SELLING
POINT: “I think Petersburg’s greatest asset is its
people. We couldn’t survive
without our volunteers, who
live in the city limits and
outlying areas. They’re always willing to help, just out
of the goodness of their
hearts.”
TOP PRIORITY AS
MAYOR: “My top priority is
to keep the city financially
secure while pleasing its
residents.”
Beauty of city’s hilltop vistas helps attract home buyers
By ANN GORMAN
CORRESPONDENT
PETERSBURG — With its hilltop views
of the Sangamon River Valley, Petersburg
has been attracting newcomers ever since
settlers moved to the town from nearby
New Salem in the 1830s. Today, people
from Springfield, Chicago and even California and Michigan are relocating to the
community.
Pete Olesen of Blane Real Estate said
Petersburg is appealing to all ages because “it’s quaint and family-friendly with
good schools and a strong business community.” Plus, home prices often are
lower compared to metropolitan areas, he
said.
“We have all these awesome assets,”
Olesen said, noting that a woman recently
visited from the Pacific Northwest and
was so taken with the area that she’s now
hoping to buy a house in Petersburg.
Mayor Diane Kube thinks Petersburg’s
population has risen slightly since the
2000 census, which found 2,299 residents.
She added that new homes have gone up
in the East Bluff subdivision, part of which
is in the city limits, and there’s been
growth on the outskirts of town in the
Grand Oaks, Arrowhead Point, Woodland
Lakes, Oakwood and Park Place subdivisions as well as at Lake Petersburg.
According to Steve Duncan, Menard
County coordinator and zoning administrator, five building permits have been issued since June for new homes in Grand
Oaks, which sits on a bluff south of the city.
Petersburg’s residential landscape includes Victorian-style mansions, tradition-
al bungalows and newly constructed
dwellings.
In recent years, the Menard County
Housing Authority has razed aging apartment complexes and built a mix of singlefamily homes, duplexes and two-bedroom, handicapped-accessible or adaptable apartments. Director Anne Smith
said the project is part of the housing authority’s long-range plan to provide affordable housing for working families, the
elderly and the disabled.
A new water treatment plant was completed in April in rural Menard County, replacing a facility built more than 100 years
ago near the Sangamon River in Petersburg. The $5.4-million project included
transmission lines, two wells, an 8,000
square-foot facility, a back-up power
source, engineering and design costs.
“It’s a dream come true,” Kube said at
the dedication.
An enhanced 911 emergency call system also is up and running. The undertaking began in 2002 and took nearly five
years to finalize.
After decades of trying to squeeze into
a narrow, century-old structure on Sheridan Avenue, Petersburg’s volunteer firefighters have room for trucks and other
equipment in a new, six-bay firehouse on
Taylor Street.
“It’s a big improvement over the old facility,” Fire Chief Roger Gum remarked.
But Kube said some of the city’s streets
and old water and sewer lines still need to
be improved.
“We need more funding available for
street repairs,” the mayor said, adding
that city officials have applied for grants
for sidewalk repair and antique-style
lighting downtown.
School Superintendent Matt Brue said
that the Porta School District “is small, but
it has all the amenities of a big district.”
The district’s sixth-day enrollment totaled 1,214 students, down from 1,228 in
2006. However, Brue pointed out that the
average daily attendance is up, partly because of a truancy program the district
has enacted.
All schools in the district are meeting
the federal No Child Left Behind program’s goals, and test scores continue to
go up, Brue said.
Kube believes Petersburg is an ideal
place to raise children or retire.
“People love our rolling hills, the aesthetics of our city and the friendliness of
our residents,” she said.
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PAGE
38A
C H A T H A M
It’s no
small town
anymore
By DEBRA LANDIS
CORRESPONDENT
CHATHAM — Coffee
giant Starbucks is expected
to open a store in early 2008
in a building being completed on a site just east of the intersection of Illinois 4 and
Plummer Boulevard in
Chatham.
Many Chatham residents
see the move as one of many
signs their community is no
longer a small, rural town
but is evolving into a more
urban area.
Indeed, Starbucks representatives said the company
looks for communities that
are growing and offer a market for products ranging
from upscale coffee and tea
to pastries, CDs and gift
items.
“I think the economic outlook for Chatham is very
good,” village president Tom
Gray said.
In addition to Starbucks,
another chain, County Market, has opened in the former
Harmon’s Supermarket in
Foxx Creek Plaza. Walgreen’s and Ace Hardware
are among other big-name
companies that have opened
in the village.
Local businesses are also
expanding. Secret Recipes, in
a new location on Main
Street, now offers in-store
dining in addition to catering
and meal delivery services.
Foxx Creek Plaza, largely
unoccupied a few years ago,
has more tenants, including
State Farm Insurance.
The village is poised to expand pretty much in all directions.
Apartment Mart of Springfield is building single-family
residences and upscale
apartments on the north side
of Chatham to the west of
Illinois 4.
Developer Robert Plummer owns property on the far
west side of Chatham. When
that site might be developed
is unknown.
Residential developments
have been proposed on
Chatham’s south side as well.
Subdivisions that started in
the 1990s continue to be developed, according to Meredith Branham, Chatham director of public works.
local
LEADER
Tom
Gray
Surrounded mostly by fields, Chatham can sprawl in any direction, but areas near Illinois 4 have seen the most development.
Exponential
TITLE: Village president
AGE: 56
FAMILY: Wife, Mariann
Gray; children, two sons
OCCUPATION: General
legal counsel, Illinois
Teachers’ Retirement System
EDUCATION: Bachelor’s
degree, Southern Illinois
University at Carbondale;
law degree, SIU School of
Law; master’s studies in
public administration, SIUCarbondale.
BEST THINGS ABOUT
LIVING IN CHATHAM: “I
think the small town atmosphere and how the people
support their community
and the school district.
Chatham is a very friendly
community.”
MUNICIPAL NEEDS: “I
think we need a new village
hall, but we need to wait on
that for now.”
EXPANSION
By DEB LANDIS
CORRESPONDENT
CHATHAM — Chatham got its
second traffic light in the 1990s.
The lights were needed to handle
a growing local population and increased traffic flow along Illinois 4,
which runs north and south
through the village. The lights also
were a precursor of new economic
development to come.
Since the 1990s, new sanitary
sewers have been installed in various parts of town, street work has
been conducted on the village
square, additional street lights have
been added and improvements have
been made at the busiest intersections.
Village has come long
way in past 10 years
In early 2008, an electric substation is expected to be completed on
a site west of Illinois 4 on
Chatham’s north side.
“That will help handle an increased electric load,” village president Tom Gray said, citing a population he thinks will hit 12,500 by
the next census in 2010.
State and local leaders long have
discussed the possibility of Illinois 4
being expanded to four lanes
through Chatham. When that might
occur and where the state would get
the money are unknown, according
to Chatham officials.
However, village planner Mike
Williamsen has said that “something needs to be done” to ease traffic congestion caused by the thousands of vehicles that travel Illinois
4 each day. Recent months have
found the state repairing a bridge
on the village’s north side that
spans Pole Cat Creek.
In late summer this year, village
trustees approved construction of a
Chatham water plant.
That plant, which would use an
aquifer as a water source, is to be
completed within the next two to
three years. That will mean the village no longer will rely on City
Water, Light and Power for water
and will have more flexibility in
how it expands its boundaries. The
contract with CWLP limits the extent to which Chatham can expand
northward.
Village officials have said water
rates will be competitive with those
of surrounding communities.
L I N C O L N
Interstate key to recent development
Travelers stop by
for rest from road
Location may be
ideal middle ground
By PETE SHERMAN
By PETE SHERMAN
STAFF WRITER
STAFF WRITER
Lincoln’s proximity to Interstate 55 is
a blessing and a curse. Roughly 25,000
cars pass by the city every day as they
travel up and down that stretch of the interstate.
The temptation is to lure as many
highway travelers into town as possible,
charge them for lunch or dinner, maybe
fuel up their cars and call it a day.
Despite some commercial developments, the bulk of Lincoln’s commercial
growth is due to its I-55 connection.
“We are undergoing quite a bit of development on the west side, close to I55,” said Rob Orr, executive director of
the Lincoln and Logan County Development Partnership. “We can draw business from it — anything that appeals to
travelers. Maybe get them to stay at a
The
Logan
County
Courthouse
rises
above
the
business
district
in downtown
hotel. Do a little shopping.”
Lincoln.
Once off the highway, the trick is
drawing them downtown, where Lincoln
can show off its historical side. Local
merchants have organized a marketing
campaign they’ve dubbed “ABE-solutely.”
The hard part is what comes next.
“Though they certainly help, retail
services are not a driving force,” Orr
said. “We certainly want more primary
ty-of-life issues. Under Davis-Kavelman,
By PETE SHERMAN
jobs, producing goods sold outside the
much of the historic downtown area has
STAFF WRITER
area.”
been made handicapped accessible.
Lincoln is beginning to see some of
Another top priority is to spruce up the
In many ways, Lincoln is caught between
this. The city boasts several economic
city’s county courthouse, which dominates
the old and the new.
development achievements, including
its central square. The city has a public fitWhen Mayor Beth Davis-Kavelman talks
the $14 million Robert’s Sysco Food Disness center that’s sophisticated for cities its
about where Lincoln needs improvement,
tribution Center that opened in 2006. In
size. The Lincoln Park District also is planshe mentions better transportation services
addition, the city has landed a freight
ning to open a skate park next year, sugfor seniors and the disabled. She mentions
hauler (BlackHauLine Inc.) and angesting it is keeping all ages in mind.
the priority the city must place on preservnounced it will soon be hosting a new
“Money is the biggest factor,” Davising its historic integrity. And the community
Hampton Inn, an assisted living center
Kavelman said. “We’re not a home-rule
needs to extend sewer lines to the city’s
for the elderly and a Central Illinois Recity.” That means Lincoln is bound by state
northeast side, which is competing with the
gional Access branch to serve those with
rapidly growing west end near Interstate 55. law to keep property-tax increases to a maxdisabilities.
imum 5-percent per year.
Lincoln also is placing a priority on quali-
Residents of small towns tend to boast
about their low crime rates, decent schools,
that “small-town” feeling. When the need
arises to head to the big city, most also
point out they are within easy reach.
So, what makes Lincoln any different?
Realtor Greg Brinner lists the same
generic plusses when he talks up the city,
where he heads a RE/MAX office. But he
also makes a good case that Lincoln may be
an ideal middle ground, planted firmly between several larger central Illinois communities.
“We have a percentage of people who
move to Lincoln because they are splitting
the drive between Springfield and Bloomington or between Springfield and Peoria.
There are major shopping malls within 35
to 40 minutes in four directions,” Brinner
said.
Despite Lincoln’s halfway-point location,
the city’s population in the past 20 years
has decreased slightly. According to U.S.
Census records, Lincoln’s population
dipped from 15,369 in 2000 to 14,822 in
2006. The 2000 count was slightly lower
than 1990’s census tally of 15,418.
Some recent business growth suggests
the possibility of reversing this trend. But
present housing trends haven’t indicated
this is happening yet.
For instance, Lincoln isn’t rolling out new
subdivisions, at least not the kind that hint
at a boom. The only new one around, The
Legends, is struggling to sell lots. It doesn’t
help that the subdivision, three miles north
of Lincoln, depends on septic tanks and
well water. Brinner said the development’s
lack of city services is one reason why it is
selling slowly.
But generally, residential real estate in
Lincoln is a good value. The median home
price there is about $84,500, and many of
the homes have historic interest.
Mayor’s priorities for Lincoln
include innovation, preservation
local
LEADER
Beth DavisKavelman
TITLE: Mayor
AGE: 49
FAMILY: Husband, Tom; six
adult children
EDUCATION: B.A. legal
studies, minor in political
science, University of Illinois at Springfield
LINCOLN’S BIGGEST
SELLING POINT: “We’re a
small city that offers anything anybody in any city
would want: strong schools;
state-of-the-art hospital;
three colleges; a rail system; and restaurants.”
TOP PRIORITY AS
MAYOR: “To keep up our
streets and historic preservation.”
WHAT DOES LINCOLN
NEED MOST: “Transportation services for the elderly
and disabled.”
PAGE
39A
S H E R M A N
Clatfelter says growth not too fast, not too slow local
LEADER
By BRUCE RUSHTON
STAFF WRITER
Winds of change have been blowing
through Sherman.
The village is growing: Between 2000
and 2006, the population jumped from
2,871 to 3,597, an increase of more
than 25 percent.
The politics shifted in the spring of
2007, when Trevor Clatfelter, 32, ousted Frank Meredith, who had been village president for two decades.
And after 31 years at The Rail Golf
Course, the State Farm Classic golf
tournament moved out of Sherman to
Panther Creek in 2007.
Even as it looks to the future, Sherman is getting ready to reflect on its
past. The village will celebrate its 150th
anniversary in 2008 with a celebration
tentatively scheduled for the fall.
The village is named after David
Sherman, one of four investors who
bought and platted Sherman back in
1858. The village didn’t incorporate
until 1959, when just 209 people called
Sherman home. Village presidents last
a long time in Sherman. Clatfelter is
the village’s fourth.
Once known for being a home to
coal miners and Italian-American residents, Sherman today sells itself as a
good place to raise a family.
“I think the school district is one
thing that brings young families out to
our community,” Clatfelter said. “The
infrastructure has kept pace with the
growth. We haven’t grown too fast and
we haven’t grown too slowly, so property taxes haven’t been increasing too
rapidly.”
The loss of the golf tournament to
Panther Creek might have cost restau-
rants a few customers, but it wasn’t a
huge economic blow because Sherman
has no hotels, Clatfelter said. Carter
Brothers Lumber Co., which provides
about two-thirds of the village’s income
from sales taxes, is the biggest business
in a town that could use a few more,
Clatfelter said. A grocery store is on the
wish list.
The village also needs to have a bit of
fun. Clatfelter said he’s hoping to start
showing movies in one of the village
parks. But just who will administer
parks in Sherman might change.
For now, the village is in charge of
the town’s three parks, which feature
baseball diamonds, soccer fields and
picnic areas. About one-third of the village is within the boundaries of the
Springfield Park District, which operates Carpenter Park along the Sangamon River, just north of the village. But
the district doesn’t have any parks
within village limits, and some residents don’t see the reason for their tax
dollars to be spent outside of their village.
“The residents want to disconnect
from the Springfield Park District —
that’s cut-and-dried,” Clatfelter said.
“They don’t understand why they’re
paying into the Springfield Park District when they’re Sherman residents.”
If the secession effort succeeds, one
possibility is creating a new park district, Clatfelter said. The village has
talked about building a new park. Clatfelter foresees a park of between 20
and 40 acres near the center of town.
He says he’d also like to see a park set
aside for dogs.
“I think of the great needs is more
parks and green space to bring the
community together,” Clatfelter said.
Trevor
Clatfelter
AGE: 32
FAMILY: Wife, Michelle
EDUCATION: Bachelor’s degree from University of Illinois at Springfield, major in political studies and minored
in labor relations.
OCCUPATION: Deputy director of the Commission on
Government Forecasting and Accountability, an arm of
the Illinois General Assembly
QUOTE: “I think the school district is one thing that brings
young families out to our community.”
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PAGE
40A
A U B U R N
J A C K S O N V I L L E
Population on
track for 5,000
By DEBRA LANDIS
CORRESPONDENT
AUBURN — The city of
Auburn could be close to a
population of 5,000 in 2010,
according to Mayor Joe Powell.
“We were 4,300 at the last
census in 2000,” Powell said.
“Prior to that, we grew by
about 600 from 1990 to 2000.
We’ve been keeping track of
building starts. In 2010, we
could be a little bit more
than 4,900 and could be real
close to 5,000.”
To improve water flow to
the city’s growing west side,
Auburn has replaced a 6inch water main with a 10inch one that runs from Seventh Street to west of Illinois
4.
Road-wise, the city will be
involved in upcoming township and county discussions
looking at improvements to
Divernon Road, part of
which runs through Auburn.
The road is seeing increased
travel with the annexation of
the Divernon schools by the
Auburn School District, said
Powell.
“One improvement could
be widening it,” he said.
The Auburn School District’s sixth-day enrollment
for 2007 was 1,558. In 2006,
it was 1,268. The increase
was due primarily to the annexation of the Divernon
Mayor says city could use
more residential developments
schools, according to school
superintendent Kathy Garrett.
Red Bud Park — a name
proposed by students in
Auburn schools with two
others in 2004 and officially
adopted by the city — spans
43 acres on Auburn’s far
southeast side. It is a work in
progress.
A fund has been set aside
for the development of the
park, and officials are keeping an eye out for grants.
Work on the park will be
done in phases as money becomes available, similar to
how Chatham Community
Park has developed since the
1990s, Powell said.
The Auburn City Council
bought the site off Kennedy
Road in 2001 for about
$3,100 per acre from the
nearby DICKEY-john Corp.
The park includes a creek,
woods and open areas.
At the time, the council
wasn’t looking to develop a
new park, Powell said. But
when the opportunity arose
to buy the land, members believed it important to do so in
order to have land set aside
for a city park, he said.
Money from city reserves
paid for the purchase. Government grants and donations will help pay for development, as will revenue generated from a parks referendum last year, Powell said.
By BUFORD GREEN
STAFF WRITER
JACKSONVILLE — With a steady
population this century, Jacksonville
and South Jacksonville are ready to
add to their numbers if residential development continues.
Jacksonville had an official population of 19,939 in 2000, and that might
be up by a few residents, longtime
Mayor Ron Tendick said recently.
“There are no active subdivisions
out there because most have been sold
out,” Tendick said. “Historically, there
local
LEADER
Joe
Powell
TITLE: Mayor
AGE: 57
FAMILY: Wife, Connie Powell; two grown children
OCCUPATION: Employed
by Brandt
BEST THING ABOUT
LIVING IN AUBURN: “The
friendly, caring people.”
CHALLENGE FOR
COMMUNITY: Looking
ahead, Auburn will need to
plan and set aside money
for infrastructure and park
improvements.
By BUFORD GREEN
STAFF WRITER
JACKSONVILLE — Commercial development in Jacksonville and South Jacksonville
is at least holding its own.
One major factor mentioned
by city, village and regional officials is the soon-to-be completed Wal-Mart superstore on
West Morton Avenue on the
western edge of Jacksonville.
When Wal-Mart leaves its
current location several blocks
to the east, the addition is expected to open up other development.
Kelly Hall, director of the
Community Development Office for Jacksonville, said the
new Wal-Mart site, built for
about $20 million, will easily be
the largest retail center in the
city. It is expected to open early
JACKSONVILLE
next year.
“That may be the most ever
TITLE: Mayor
spent in the city on any one
AGE: 65
project,” Hall said, “but some
FAMILY: Wife, Rosemary;
others, including by some inadult children, Lane Tendick
dustries, might surprise you.
and Lana Keen
Some of them have spent a lot
EDUCATION: Jacksonville
of money on updating and adHigh School; Illinois Colditions that people don’t know
lege, two years
much about.
TIME IN OFFICE: Elected
“For instance, AGI is spendto five four-year terms, ending 2009; has said he will
ing $825,000 in structural renot run for another term
modeling, AC Foods has spent
QUOTE: “I think Jack$517,000 on a new tanker resonville offers a unique
loading building and Passavant
quality of life, in that you
Area Hospital has two projects
can access about any intersubmitted for well over
est you might have. There
$300,000.
is still a diverse economy
“Pathway is building a new
here, and this is a stable
group home for $254,000,” Hall
community.”
continued. “Festival Foods
(now County Market) is spending $1.2 million on new interiors and exteriors, Pactiv is
spending $818,000 on a production line addition and Steak
n Shake is putting up $1.3 million for its new building (near
the new Wal-Mart). These are all just construction costs.”
The new developments are in line with recent years, he
said.
local
PAWNEE — Pawnee had a population of
2,647 in 2000.
Village President Kenton Manning expects
to see an increase in population by 2010.
“I don’t know for sure how much, but we
have new subdivisions being developed
now,” Manning said.
Recent years have seen a sandwich shop
and car repair business start here. Citing the
proximity to Wal-Mart superstores in
Springfield and Taylorville, Manning said he
doesn’t see a Super Wal-Mart developing in
Pawnee. However, he added, there has been
interest in attracting a Dollar General store.
Jacksonville Mayor Ron Tendick also has an optimistic take
on commercial development.
“A lot more is in the works
when Wal-Mart opens,” he
said. “We are in good shape regarding infrastructure. We
have worked diligently on that
since I’ve been here, and we
are improving it all the time.
“The revitalization downtown (Central Park Plaza area)
is already taking place. We
should start seeing construction on that major project in
2009.”
South Jacksonville village
president Gordon Jumper also
paints a glowing picture for the
village of 3,475 residents.
“The new Holiday Inn Express should be finishing up by
early December,” he said.
“That is about a $3 million project with over 60 rooms.”
SOUTH JACKSONVILLE
The village also completed
the quarter-mile widening of
West Vandalia from South
AGE: 54
Main to South Diamond with a
FAMILY: Wife, Jean; six
new asphalt roadway and new
children
sidewalks on both sides, he
EDUCATION: Jacksonville
said.
High School, class of 1975;
“Also significant this year
Illinois College graduate;
was the completion of the Play
CPA
for All Park in Godfrey Park,”
ELECTED: 1997
Jumper said.
QUOTE: “Things are movTerry Denison, head of the
ing in a lot of areas. We are
Jacksonville Regional Economnot just focused on commercial development, but
ic Development Corp., says of
we are seeing more interthe state of commercial develest in residential developopment in the county and area,
ment.”
“I think it is status quo . . . not
growing and not declining, for
a lot of reasons. That doesn’t
mean the JREDC isn’t working
very hard to improve it. . . .
There are just fewer projects
out there. It’s a tough business that we are in.
“We have announced our ‘Building on Success’ campaign
for 2008-12, which will kick in early next year,” Denison
said. “We are shooting for $2.1 million in commitments, and
right now, we are at almost $1.5 million.”
local
LEADER LEADER
Ron
Tendick
Village anticipates growth
in resident numbers by 2010
CORRESPONDENT
the years,” Hall said. “There is . . .
some discussion with a developer for
another large subdivision, although we
can’t announce that yet.”
South Jacksonville Village President
Gordon Jumper said residential additions are in the works for the village of
3,500.
“The Sherman Oaks Housing Development, currently 13 units, is a new
development. That may double the
south side of Minor Drive. Also, there
is a 12-unit subdivision going up on
the south side of West Vandalia,” he
said.
Wal-Mart superstore near completion
P A W N E E
By DEB LANDIS
has been at least one or two with lots
available, so we need to have additional building in that area.
“The Downtown Commons is a 22unit development just north of Central
Park Plaza, and it is a major development. Housing for the deaf on Lincoln
Avenue, about 39 units, is in the
works, but we could use more residential developments around the city.”
Kelly Hall, director of the Community Development Office, said residential
development is in line with recent
years.
“It doesn’t change very much over
The village and school district have “a
great working relationship,” Manning said.
School superintendent Lyle Rigdon, in his
first year in Pawnee, said the community
has been “very welcoming” and that he is
enjoying his job.
Smaller districts around the state, including Virden, are exploring options for consolidating or being annexed by larger districts.
Divernon, which previously talked with
Pawnee about forming a new district, was
annexed by the Auburn schools.
Rigdon said Pawnee is not looking to join
another district. The district is including
more vocational classes in its curriculum —
a move seen as a way to help students interested in technical and vocational careers.
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PAGE
41A
R I V E R T O N
Town laid back after cowboy past
Officials OK
with slow but
steady progress
By BRUCE RUSHTON
STAFF WRITER
Riverton has a history of playing
second fiddle.
Jesse James, for instance, once
spent the night in Riverton en
route to a Minnesota heist, according to local lore. But another
Riverton, in Iowa, holds bragging
rights over the Sangamon County
village. It was there that James
and his gang actually robbed a
bank four years later.
Folks in Riverton aren’t complaining. They seem quite content
living life as a small town northeast of Springfield.
“It’s a bedroom community,”
said village office manager Linda
Viola. “We’re small.”
Platted in 1837, Riverton started
life as Jamestown, according to
the village Web site.
The original owner, a land speculator from Springfield, failed to
pay property taxes and the town
was sold to a Maryland investor,
who failed to make payments after
traveling to California with the
Donner Party.
After foreclosure, the town was
eventually renamed Howlett, after
the owner of a distillery, during
the Civil War. After yet another financial collapse, the village formally incorporated and changed
its name to Riverton in 1873.
Ted Schurter/The State Journal-Register
Izabell Beaghan, 3, and her mother, Stephanie, share a wide-eyed kiss at the Riverton Fall Festival in Center Park.
With a distillery, saloon and
plenty of coal miners, the Riverton
of the 19th century sounds like it
would have been a wild place. No
more. Denizens of modern-day
Riverton live in subdivisions with
names such as Glen Acres, Brookfield and Riveria. Another called
Silent Rain is being built.
“The subdivisions are really
nice,” Viola said. “We’ve got a couple of new subdivisions going up.
Our commercial (development) is
going up. The biggest draw is the
school district.”
House prices are rising with
new subdivisions. The median
price for a home in Riverton in
2000 was $85,300, according to
the village; in 2006, the median
price was $99,700.
Businesses in Riverton are small
and include a gas station with a
convenience store, a Subway, a
Chinese restaurant and auto repair shops.
The town recently replaced a
water main that led from wells to
the village water plant. Sewer
service is being extended to service more homes, and the local volunteer fire district is building a
new station.
“There’s always work to do with
water and sewers,” Viola said.
And with parks.
In 2004, the village paid
$200,000 for a 20-acre tract just
west of the municipal center. Because the property was a cornfield, it became known as the Field
of Dreams.
Although progress has been
made, the dream has yet to be fulfilled.
Having spent all available funds
for a new park on the land, the village is relying on donations and
fundraisers such as pancake
breakfasts to make the dream a
reality.
So far, a parking lot and fields
for soccer and football have been
completed. Three baseball diamonds, bleachers, fences, lighting,
concession stands, walkways and
a pond are still on the drawing
board.
Donations of any size are welcome, and anyone who gives $25
or more will be recognized on a
plaque.
The new park will complement
three other parks, including
Wheeland Park on the shore of the
Sangamon River, which features a
boat ramp, campsites and electric
hookups for $5 a night. Veterans
Memorial Park, the newest in
town, includes a fishing pond for
children.
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PAGE
42A
T A Y L O R V I L L E
Just 61/2
miles to go
on highway
Businesses
attracted
to industrial
park project
By SARAH ANTONACCI
STAFF WRITER
Taylorville leaders have felt
for years that a key to their
long-term success would be a
four-lane corridor between
the city and Springfield.
It’s closer now than ever.
And even though the last
section of road to be completed, a 61/2-mile stretch between
Berry and Edinburg, isn’t anywhere near Taylorville, city
leaders consider it a main support to the city’s development.
“We’re waiting for the capital bill to get passed,” Taylorville Mayor Frank Mathon
said. “If it gets passed, we
have a good shot of having
that taken care of.”
Mathon said the completed
project will make travel between jobs in Springfield and
homes in Taylorville easier
and will give business and industry a smooth path for travel between the two cities.
“The very success of a community depends on the transportation in and out of it for
business and industry. That
61/2 miles is very important,”
Mathon said.
The Illinois 29 project has
become a focus of the community, too.
Since1992,whenTaylorville
residentMelodyTraughber
waskilledinacrashwhiletravelingontheicytwo-laneroadway,Taylorvilleandsurroundingresidentsbandedtogether
toformProject29. The grassroots organization has become
an effective lobbying group,
pushing local, state and national politicians to get behind
the widening of the roadway.
Fred Ronnow, head of the
Greater Taylorville Chamber
of Commerce, said the growth
of Taylorville toward Springfield is natural.
“The four-lane highway has
to be good for business because Springfield keeps coming this way, and we keep
going that way,” he said.
By SARAH ANTONACCI
STAFF WRITER
T.J. Salsman/The State Journal-Register
Bob Orr, left, and Homer Harris — who have been friends for more than 30 years — often run
into each other on the Taylorville square.
Housing market thriving
By SARAH ANTONACCI
STAFF WRITER
While the population of Taylorville has remained stagnant
over the past seven years, the
face of the housing market has
not.
The population of the city was
11,427 in 2000 and, according to
Mayor Frank Mathon, has remained much the same. But the
number of new homes being built
and new subdivisions being developed is on the rise, according
to those involved in the process.
“The areas that are growing are
outside our city limits. But those
people shop and eat in Taylorville,” Mathon said, pointing to
the Bertinetti subdivision.
Marty Davis, developer of upscale subdivision Lakeshore Estates, said his lots range from
$69,000 and run up to $150,000,
quite a bit more than the average
Taylorville home site.
“There’s a lot of interest,” he
said, noting that a lot of people
who are entering retirement or
Retirees, families
come together on
outskirts of city
are retired want to live on the
water and that there’s a shortage
of those lots located in the Midwest.
“What I read and hear is that
people our age want to be on
water and own their own boat
and have their own dock, but they
want concrete streets and (city)
water and sewer, and we offer all
that.”
Much of the interest in Taylorville has come from elsewhere
— Springfield, Chicago, St. Louis
and Indianapolis.
Monte Siegrist, a developer of
three of the other subdivisions,
said he’s developed 68 lots in the
past eight or nine years and has
sold all but eight or nine of those.
“It’s not fast growth,” he said,
but it is growth.
Unlike a big city where developers target their subdivisions at
specific markets — elderly, empty
nesters, couples with children,
newly married couples — small
towns generally build subdivisions that will appeal to all.
“Here, you get retirees and
young families living side by
side,” Siegrist said, noting that he
often builds three-bedroom
homes because they appeal to the
most buyers. Recently, he built
three-bedroom, two-bath homes
in the White Oaks subdivision
and sold those homes for $80,000
to $90,000 each, something he
said builders have told him is unheard of in other locations.
Many buyers live in Taylorville
but work elsewhere. Siegrist sold
a home to one couple where one
of the spouses worked in Springfield and the other in Shelbyville
— they split the 55-mile difference and live in Taylorville.
“We have good schools, good
churches, good civic organizations, good everything,” he said.
Since 1839
Commercial development is on
the verge of exploding in Taylorville,
according to Mary Renner, the economic director of the county’s economic development corporation. It’s
mostly because of the development
of a new industrial park.
“I get at least one call a week from
developers, real estate executives
(and others) to see if we have sites
available for them. I couldn’t have
imagined there was that much interest in a town that small before I took
this job.”
The Christian County Economic
Development Corporation is working on developing a new industrial
park. The old one fell victim to mine
subsidence, she said.
There are other signs of growth,
too, she said. Waste Management
Inc. spent about $5.5 million on a facility at the Five Oaks landfill west
of Taylorville that will use methane
and carbon dioxide produced by decaying wastes to generate electricity.
Heat from four generators powered by the gases will be used for the
adjoining greenhouse operations of
Buckley Growers of Illinois. Most of
the 3.2 megawatts of electricity produced will be sold to Ameren Corp.
Taylorville and Christian County
extended an enterprise zone to the
213-acre landfill, which provides for
a break on sales and property taxes.
“We’ll get a lot of national publicity on this,” Renner said.
And, GSI, the world’s largest
manufacturer of steel farm and commercial storage bins and silos, also
recently renovated the old Sangamon Manufacturing building and is
building another structure.
Fred Ronnow of the Greater Taylorville Chamber of Commerce also
noted several new stores on the
square. In Good Taste sells homemade confections, kitchen supplies
and specialty coffees and teas, and
Cottage Rose is a consignment shop
with a luncheonette in the back.
LEADER
Frank
Mathon
TITLE: Mayor
AGE: 61
FAMILY: Wife of 39 years,
Pam; adult children, Caroline and Mark
EDUCATION: Bachelor’s
degree from Eastern Illinois
University and master’s degree in industrial technology plus 36 hours at Illinois
State University
OCCUPATION: Full-time
mayor and retired teacher;
taught building trades for 25
years in Taylorville
TOP PRIORITY AS
MAYOR: “Seeing living
wages and business and
industrial recruitment in
Taylorville. We have been
working very diligently on
our industrial park, and it’s
about to come to fruition,
and we’ve spent a lot of
time and effort on the Grain
Systems Inc. expansion.”
TAYLORVILLE’S
BIGGEST SELLING
POINT: “We still have
small-town values. People
still walk the streets. It’s a
close-knit community. If
someone has a problem or
needs help, we have
fundraisers and groups and
civic organizations to help.
It’s a good place to raise
kids.”
TAYLORVILLE’S
BIGGEST NEED: “We
need more industry and
more jobs in Taylorville.
That’s our No. 1 issue.
Everything else will fall into
place when you have jobs
paying living scale and you
can support a family.”
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PAGE
43A
R O C H E S T E R
New subdivisions strain
village as population booms
could get a boost from three proposed developments.
The Springfield Catholic Diocese, a Bloomington developer
and Apartment Mart of Springfield
are in discussions with village officials for proposed projects that
would include a blend of homes,
apartments, offices and retail outlets, Laningham said.
Willow Pointe subdivision,
which would include single-family,
duplex and commercial zoning,
has been proposed for a West
Main Street site across from the
Rochester Elementary School and
Rochester Middle School campus.
Other proposed subdivisions include Foxborough, near the Oak
Mill Estates subdivision, and Sundown Farms, near the Wyndmoor
and Grove Park subdivisions.
Rochester’s reputation for quality schools and a desire to live in a
community near a large city are
among factors prompting people
to consider moving here, village
and school officials have said.
By January 2008, a new junior
high and auditorium on the
Rochester district’s Illinois 29
campus are expected to be completed. Recent years saw additional rooms added at the elementary
and high schools. But the need for
more classroom space persists.
The Rochester Board of Education is expected this month to start
reviewing recommendations by a
committee of district residents on
how to handle increased growth.
Rochester Elementary School,
the committee found, is over capacity, and the district needs more
sports facilities. The committee
recommended construction of
middle and junior high schools on
more than 60 acres of land the district owns near Cardinal Hill Road.
By DEBRA LANDIS
CORRESPONDENT
ROCHESTER — Village officials
want their community to grow but
do not believe it is fair to ask current residents to pay for infrastructure to accommodate the new
growth.
About $1.5 million worth of sanitary sewer improvements are
needed as the result of five proposed new subdivisions in the central and eastern portions of
Rochester. The village and developers are discussing proposals
that would see the developers
cover the costs of the sewer improvements, Village Manager Dale
Laningham said.
Road-wise, Sangamon County’s
reconfiguration of Cardinal Hill
Road will make it easier to get to
and from some of the smaller
communities on the county’s east
side, Village President Dave Armstrong said.
In Rochester, the reconfiguration resulted in a new roadway,
which, among other things, links
Illinois 29 with the northeastern
section of the village and makes it
easier to move between the
Rochester Fire and Rescue Department and the village hall and
library complex.
Such improvements accommodate a growing population.
“Rochester’s population grew by
550 people between 2000 and
2006,” Armstrong said, referring
to a special census that showed an
increase from 2,892 in the year
2000 to 3,442 in 2006.
The increased population could
mean approximately $65,000 more
in annual tax revenues.
Commercial and residential
growth on the village’s east side
local
LEADER
Dave
Armstrong
AGE: 62
FAMILY: Wife, DrexEllen
Armstrong; one adult
daughter
OCCUPATION: Retired as
business administrator with
McFarland Mental Health
Center.
EDUCATION: Graduate of
the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, where
he majored in business administration
Joseph Woodard as Abraham Lincoln and artist Helen Stannard participate in a celebration of
the anniversary of the 1842 meeting between Lincoln and Martin Van Buren in Rochester.
Businesses plan growth via renovation
By DEB LANDIS
CORRESPONDENT
ROCHESTER — While a municipality’s economic
growth hinges, in part, on how well state and federal
economies are doing, Rochester Village President
Dave Armstrong says of his community, “I think the
economic outlook is very good.”
“We have developed about as far west as we can. I
think we will see the growth in the central and eastern portions of the village,” he added.
Recent years have seen the Bank and Trust Co. convert a former convenience store into a full-service
branch here, and renovations have been made to the
Rochester State Bank and other local businesses.
In September, financial planner and former
Rochester Village President Grant Blasdell and his
wife, Alison, announced they had bought the
Rochester Station and will remodel it. Rochester Sta-
tion has mostly professional office tenants, although it
also is home to Gambino’s Family Restaurant.
A Rochester business that last operated about four
years ago, The Berry Patch, re-opened this month for
the holiday season. Owners R.L. and Carolyn Moore
say they’ll eventually move the store, which includes
antiques and a variety of gifts to a pre-Civil War era
farmstead they’re renovating.
Meanwhile, three local businesses are now selling
alcohol, and a fourth has applied for a liquor license,
Armstrong said. Village residents approved a referendum last spring that ended prohibition and allowed
the local sale of alcohol.
Proponents said allowing alcohol sales could boost
commercial growth and mean more sales tax for
Rochester.
“I think it will help. It provides more opportunity to
shop here, rather than go to Springfield,” Armstrong
said.
ONE OF THE BEST THINGS
ABOUT ROCHESTER: “We
have so many friendly people living here.”
CHALLENGE FOR COMMUNITY: “Sanitary sewer up-
grades to handle proposed
new subdivisions without
asking current residents to
pay for them.” While details
have not yet been finalized,
the village is exploring placing an additional tax on
new developments. Revenue generated by the new
tax would pay off debit the
village incurs with making
sanitary sewer upgrades.
Village of Rochester
Benefits of a small town . . .
conveniences of a large city nearby.
Mini Warehouse
of Rochester
Phone 498-9743
Fax 498-7348
- Established 1976
130 John Street
P.O. Box 258
Rochester, IL 62563-0258
On Route 29
Outdoor Parking
For Campers & Boats
OPEN DAILY
ROCHESTER
OPEN 7
DAYS A WEEK
ANDY LUNT
President
Convenience Store
Open 7 days a week
450 State Street • 498-7515
WATERS
AGENCY,
INSURANCE
AND
INC.
JAMES F. WATERS
PERRY M. WATERS
CHRIS L. WATERS
TOM B. WATERS
FARMING
124 NORTH JOHN STREET
ROCHESTER, ILLINOIS 62563
BUS: (217) 498-9309
FAX: (217) 498-9264
WILSON J. PARK
WILSON G. PARK
Wilson Park
Funeral Home
Box 708
Rochester, IL 62363
4 Area Locations
(217) 498-7696
Fax (217) 498-7698
Providing Insurance
& Financial Needs
MICHAEL J. McNICHOLAS
LUTCF, AGENT
200 East Main Street • Rochester, Illinois 62563
Phone: 217/498-7161
129 South John Street
Rochester, IL 62563
217-498-0218
Lobby
Mon - Thurs 9:00 am - 3 pm
Friday 9:00 am - 7:00 pm
Drive-Up
Mon - Thurs 7:30 am - 5:30 pm
Friday 7:30 am - 7:00 pm
Saturday 8:00 am - 12:00 pm
P.O. Box 140, Rochester, IL
217-498-7111
Route 29 & Walnut in Rochester Phone 498-9009
IRON & METALS!!
Mon.-Fri. 7:30-4:15
Saturday 8-11:45
TOP IT ALL ROOFING
Realtor -Auction Service
Chatham, IL
(217) 483-2484
One Call Does It All!
Flat Roofs - All Types & Sizes
It is an honor to serve
everyone in our auction
and real estate business.
New Construction, Remodeling &
Home Inspections
3757 South Sixth Street
www.buraski.com 529-5172
Cub Foods Plaza
2763 S. 6th St., Springfield
1987
1986
1986
Bath & Brass
First & Jefferson • Springfield, IL
1991
1990
217-522-2284
West Campus: 805 Chatham Rd, 698-8877
South Campus: 770 Apple Orchard, 528-8028
DCFS #467960/467961
1996
5850 S. 6th Street
217-585-1438
Hrs: 9:30 to 5:30 Sun-Sat
13 Years in Business!
1995
1994
Barrel
Antique Mall
1974
1972
Office:
217-498-7873 P.O. Box 75
Mobile phone: 217-306-2100 Rochester, IL 62563
M-F 9-5:30 and Sat 9-1
Prairie Capitol Convention Center
1 Convention Center Plaza
Springfield, IL
217-788-8800
TERRY DAY, President
Ph. 522-8855 • 24 Hr. Towing & After Hours 836-8855
Real Estate
Rochester, IL 62563
217-498-9890
Barb McCord, Broker, GRI
Henry Trutter, Dana Funk
14 Years of Service!
1971
1971
1971
1972
Downtown Springfield
413 E. Adams • 527-1990
New Homes • Additions •
Remodeling • Roofing
Klos Jewelry
24 Years Experience
Buying Gold & Diamonds, Antique
Pocket Watches & Wrist Watches
1705 N. Dirksen Parkway
Springfield, IL
217-544-9802
DEWITT
CHIROPRACTIC
Dr. Brett DeWitt,
Chiropractic Physician
2309 W. White Oaks Dr.
Springfield, IL
217-787-8188
JC’s Roofing
528-9178
FLAT ROOFS OF ALL TYPES & SIZES
GUTTERING • SIDING • FREE ESTIMATES
• REPAIRS
• ROLL ROOFING
• NEW ROOFS
• RUBBER ROOFS
• RE-ROOFS
• SINGLE-PLY TORCHDOWN
• SHINGLES
• REMODELING
MSF&W
Complex world.
Simple solutions.
3445 Liberty Drive
Springfield, IL
217-698-3535
www.msfw.com
Proudly providing Central Illinois with
the finest in marine sales & service.
4600 Rising Moon Rd., Spfld.
217-793-7300 www.theboatdock.com
615 S. Fifth Street, Springfield, IL 62703
Visit us on line at:
www.computermechanix.net
Phone: 217-523-2311 Fax: 217-523-2312
Free Beverage
The
For The Little Things
That Aggravate Your Life!
306.0950
(Bigger Things? Call498.8255)
111 N. 6th St.
Phone 217-527-1257
Fax 217-527-1258
OPEN 7 DAYS A WEEK
M-F 7:30am-3:00pm
Sat 8:00am-4:00pm and
Sun 10:00am-2:00pm
Residential & Commercial - Family Owned & Operated
24 HOUR PHONE
Evening & Sat. Appts. Fully Water Damage
Insured & Bonded
698-8116
Chatham 483-6434
American Legion Post 32
with a purchase of
an entree
PRESENTS
2006
Dandy HandyMan
PROFESSIONAL CARPET& FURNITURE CLEANING
THE MESS HALL
RESTAURANT
1120 Sangamon Ave.
OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
523-3415
BY-PASS AUTO REPAIR
STATE OF THE ART EQUIPMENT • PRIDE
QUALITY & CRAFTSMANSHIP
REPAIRING & AUTO BODY WORK
544-1965
Jack Stoldt
Auto Service
Total Auto One Stop Shop
717 S. Fifth St., Spfld, IL
217-522-9113
LUCKY PHILLIPS
GENERAL CONTRACTING
Springfield, IL
217-544-0558
luckyphillips@sbcglobal.net
29 Years of Great Service!
Steam World
Janitorial
• Evening & Sat. Appts. • Fully Insured & Bonded
F AND W RESOURCES
BUY BACK CENTER
525-1206
3327 TERMINAL AVE.
SPRINGFIELD
MON-FRI 8-4:30
O’Dell’s
Auto Service
Family Owned & Operated
Since 1992
421 N. Dirksen Parkway • 544-5333
Larry Richie Auctioneer 0410000100
Mike Crabtree Auctioneer 0400000256
502 Reservoir Street Loami, IL. 62661
Larry (217) 624 -2901 Mike (217) 473 - 2507
www.larryrichieauctioneer.com
2003
Civil and Structural Engineering
2000
Cliff: 217-528-9178
1998
Fix • Sell • Buy Computers
2006
332 Williams Lane, Chatham, IL 62629
Fax: 217-483-5580
1997
217-483-3774
2006
1996
Kevin Daugherty, Owner
Steam World
498.8255
Chatham 483-6434
GOT DIRTY CARPET??
Our 10th
Year of
Business!
Specializing in all your
home improvement needs.
jackstoldtauto.mechanicnet.com
1978
Used & Collectible
CD’s, DVD’s, VHS, Books, &
Records (Albums & 45’s)
DAY& COMPANY, INC.
217-522-2284
1985
BUY • SELL • TRADE
'Personalized Auto Service'
1817 W. Jefferson St.
217-546-2332
www.lawautomotive.com
Cub Foods Plaza
2763 S. 6th St.
Springfield
FOR ALL YOUR PROJECTS!
Bill Bitschenauer • Bob Bitschenauer Owners
2300 E. CLEAR LAKE AVE SPRINGFIELD
1987
Books & Music
1988
'Factory Authorized Service
for All Brands'
225 Highland, Springfield, IL
217-528-2280
4690 Pec Road, Springfield, IL
217-546-2500
Fax: 217-546-8131
www.pecmobile.com
1992
3330 Ginger Creek Dr.
Springfield, IL
217-698-7200
PROFESSIONAL ELECTRONICS &
COMMUNICATIONS
15 Hazel Dell Lane
(217) 585-5437
www.thehopeinstitute.us
In a hurry? 306.0950
1996
DENMAR
BUILDERS, INC.
Serving Springfield & all
of Illinois for 35 years.
3007 Thayer St., Springfield, IL
217-698-6425
1977
523-5233
314 West Laurel
AUCTIONEERS • REALTORS
1983
PROP.
Family Owned & Operated Since 1972
1976
MARK YEATES
Candles & Crafts
6067 Cardinal Hill Rd.
Rochester, IL • 217-498-8275
1981
Dick's Shoe
Repair
1987
1985
• Remodeling
• Repairs
• New & Re-Roofs
217-753-0408
CREATIVE
1993
• Roll Roofing
• Rubber Roofs
• Shingles
Waldmire's
1972
Family Owned & Operated
Jim Skeeters, Sr. & Anna Parrish
808 N. Bruns Lane
Springfield, IL • 217-546-6001
jimskeetersrealtor.com
Tire & Lube Centers
Serving Springfield Since 1971
Springfield, IL
217-525-7233
1976
Real Estate
Center
1979
1971
1974
Edinburg, IL 62531
217-325-3351
www.williambeckauctions.com
46 Years of Great Service
1961
1961
Dog Grooming
2926 S. Walnut
217-523-3973
1978
AUCTION & REALTY
William L. Gaule
P.E.C.
1971
1970
1959
WM BECK
For More Information:
(217) 544-7387
Phone 217.528.5111
◆ Fax 217.528-7699
927 East Jackson Street
Spingfield, IL 62701
e-mail info@rudinprinting.com
1957
Competitive Prices on ALL SCRAP
o
We D r!
o
l
o
C
1968
1100 S. 9th St.
(217) 753-1492
1001 Tainor Rd
Springfield
1956
523-3415
1120 Sangamon Ave
MERVIS
IRON & SUPPLY
1100 S. 9th St.
1966
Springfield Post #32
The American Legion
1932
1919
SERVING FOR 88 YEARS
1954
g
FURNITURE MEDIC
®
“the prescription for damaged furniture.”
Steve Decker & Nancy Decker
301 State
Franklin, IL 62638
Email: deckr4@irtc.net
Phone: 217/341-1480
217-675-2638
Fax: 217/675-2173

leader - The State Journal

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