Ward 7 Ald. Judy Yeager has heard the complaints for
years.
The southern stretch of MacArthur Boulevard, with its
vacant buildings, giant parking lots, obnoxious signage, and abundance of
payday-loan stores and auto-parts shops, has long topped the list of
grievances from concerned constituents.
“I get a lot of angry phone calls and a lot of
nasty notes,” says Yeager, who has represented much of the commercial
corridor for the last decade.
That made the community meeting held last Thursday
(March 3) all the more sweet. More than 100 people turned out to applaud
plans for an upscale shopping center along the eastern edge of MacArthur
near South Grand Avenue [see Todd Spivak, “Man with a plan,”
Feb. 24].
Todd Smith, president of Springfield-based Garrison
Group Inc., has proposed building a cluster of low-density redbrick
buildings that would house about a dozen businesses, including local
grocery Food Fantasies and possibly a Starbucks.
The new development calls for Leland Avenue to be
extended across MacArthur and for the 1930s-era Esquire Theatre to be
razed. Support for the project was near-unanimous.
“This is a wonderful, wonderful plan,”
gushed Susan Mogerman, a nearby resident and chief operating officer of the
Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation.
Smith will appear at other community meetings in
coming weeks to further promote the project and garner community input.
“I think we have the right project for this
location,” he says.
Yeager, who endorsed the plans before they were
formally unveiled last week, says she is “relieved” by the
public enthusiasm.
Revitalizing MacArthur, she says, will take a lot
more work — but she plans to bask in her glory for at least a little
while.
“Wasn’t that a cool meeting?” she
says. “For me, it was very gratifying.”
This article appears in Mar 10-16, 2005.
