Du Quoin Is Betting $3 Million It Can Change the Face of Downtown
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[The City of Du Quoin's downtown redevelopment program is paying dividends so fast the city council, economic development director Jeff Ashauer and Champion Communities president Rex Duncan are doubling down on a $1 million bet placed three years ago that they could completely change the face of a community.
The redevelopment investment has grown to $1.4 million this year.
By 2013 the investment will grow to $3 million and will include more than 20 renovated storefronts in Du Quoin, makeovers of the town's signature Alongi's Since 1933 restaurant, the Medicine Shoppe Pharmacy, and the Zimmerman Chiropractic fitness group.
Leverage from other sources including private capital, bank lending and state and federal grants on those loans is about $5,400,000. Estimated total project value over the 20 loans made in Du Quoin is approaching $6.8 million.
For downtown Du Quoin projects and improvements only, Champion Community Investments has loaned $650,000. Leverage from other sources on those loans is about $1,900,000. Estimated total project value over those 10 loans is over $2,500,000.
Estimated total project values throughout Perry County, including Du Quoin, have grown to nearly $9.2 million.
Champion Communities is a step-down derivative of the federal Empowerment Zone/Enterprise Community Initiative as its name suggests, an empowerment program. The program is based on a locally developed strategic plan, using four key principles: economic opportunity, sustainable community development, community based partnerships and strategic vision for change.
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) sponsors the program and Du Quoin was one of the first communities to jump on this opportunity. In addition, CCI manages up to $100,000 in downtown Du Quoin facade improvement program funds. As a dollar for dollar match, the total project-when all funds are distributed-will exceed $200,000. The fund matches every dollar up to $5,000 that a downtown business spends on exterior and entrance improvements.
Even Du Quoin's historic St. Nicholas Hotel--which flourished during the hey day of the Illinois Central Railroad-escaped the wrecking ball three years ago when investors wrote a check for about $600 (minimum treasurer's office surplus property bid) in a rescue operation. It was a leap of faith, but by year's end the St. Nicholas will be home to a new restaurant and microbrewery with an elevator to upper floor meeting rooms.
You can almost stand on the corner and watch change happen in downtown Du Quoin. The transformation is stunning.
The City of Du Quoin will spend $800,000 on a new downtown water line this year, another $800,000 in 2013 for a second water line beneath the town's largest cross street-South Washington Street-and a third $800,000 by Summer 203 to demolish and reconstruct new downtown sidewalks from one end of the business district to the other. The work will have an eye toward decorative curbing and crosswalk egresses. Once that work is completed the city will try and identify funding sources for sidewalk reconstruction on the side streets.
In recent years, with Ameren's help, the city installed new energy efficient blanket lighting that towers over more decorative lamppost lighting in front of the individual businesses.
Du Quoin recently completed construction of a new half million dollar solar energy park which will offset energy costs for industry in the town's industrial park.
Du Quoin Leverages Condemnation Powers to Clean Up Damaged Houses
In Du Quoin's neighborhoods city administrator Blaine Bastien, public works director Dale Spencer and health and safety officer Ron Darnell took an aggressive approach to fire-damaged and water damaged properties that were becoming eyesores. Property owners face two alternatives: repair their properties or face condemnation actions. More than a dozen private or city-sponsored demolitions have taken place.
On occasion, if the property owner cannot make the repairs, the property has been gifted to the city, which contracts for demolition, then typically recovers between 30 and 50 percent of the cost when the property is sold as a vacant lot(s).
"We are seeing this start to make a difference in some of the blighted areas," said Spencer.
The city tries to work with the property owner first. When that fails, the city hasn't been afraid of going into court.
On the County Level, Tax Agents Recycle Surplus Properties Back Into Neighborhoods
When Supervisor of Assessments John Batteau was first elected four years ago there were more than 100 assessment certificates of error on the books for properties that were assessed in error for whatever reason. Some were honest mistakes. Others were manipulative. All that has gone away as Batteau made it a goal to clean up the county's files. In 2009, there were less than 20 certificates of error and all of them had some legitimacy. For instance, a church forgot to file its tax exemption paperwork and the church's assessment of $69,000 was taken off the books to correct the church's own oversight. A handful of others were corrected for similar reasons.
In the office of Perry County Treasurer Bill Taylor and the office of County Clerk Kevin Kern only a small handful of "sale in error" files make it to the bench of Judge James Campanella for review. All three men are picky about undoing a county tax sale. It has to be because 1.) A mistake was made in that a valid lienholder was not identified early in the tax sale process or 2.) A property was damaged by fire, storm or flood during the three-year property redemption period that under Illinois statute provides for the rescinding of a tax sale, or 3.) A bankruptcy has taken place. "That's an immediate sale in error," says Treasurer Bill Taylor.
After investors cherry pick properties they know they can get an 18 to 36 percent return on over three years by "buying" the properties for taxes, what's left are a handful of houses on the bubble of condemnation or some vacant lots.
Perry County did the smart thing years ago and hired a tax sale agent to manage the advertising and sale of surplus properties that were never purchased at the treasurer's tax sale. The sale recycled properties to new owners in neighborhoods where a homeowner had always wanted to buy the vacant lot next to him.
These are the things that are beginning to put a new face on downtown Du Quoin, the neighborhoods around it and Perry County as a whole.