Here are some of the ideas proposed last week
for the old Pillsbury Mill site: fancy apartments, an agricultural
museum, a biodiesel plant, a casino, a movie theater, a
biotechnology-research center, a skate park, a clinic, an
amphitheater, a microbrewery, a storage area, a grocery store, and
a vocational-training center. A Methodist minister tossed in the idea of
building a church; a Springfield cop suggested a strip club. Working in small groups, participants in a
planning process known as a charrette kicked around ideas and
discussed the challenges of transforming the derelict industrial
property on the east side of town into . . . whatever they want.
The consensus? Whatever becomes of the site,
the land should be mixed-use, create jobs, and, perhaps to the
dismay of the good reverend, increase the city’s tax base,
all while using “green” design principles. As these stakeholders discussed design principles
and the possibility of tax-increment financing, neighborhood
residents Roy and Robert (they would not give last names), held a
brainstorming session of their own, separate from the charrette. The pair said they had heard about the
redevelopment plan on the radio but didn’t know about the
meeting at Lanphier High School on Friday. However, the men offered
Illinois Times their opinions of some of the ideas offered at the
meeting. How about a biodiesel plant? “Man, hell no! They trying to blow us
up. Just look at what happened in Decatur,” fired Robert,
alluding to last year’s deadly explosion at Formosa Plastics,
which occurred in Illiopolis, not Decatur. He stood his ground even
at the prospect of new jobs in the area. High-end condominiums? Nope. “If they turn that into condos, the
community don’t get no money out of that,” Robert said.
“You not gonna create no jobs. You just puttin’ the
money back in the pocket of the man that sold it.” Cargill
owns the property. Instead, they suggested — as did
several participants in the charrette — a mix of affordable
apartments and shopping. Roy expressed particular concern for his
elderly neighbors who now must either walk or take a cab several
blocks to North Grand Avenue to buy sundries. “That way, they can roll they
li’l carts right to the store,” he said. Officials from the Illinois Environmental
Protection Agency have said that that’s the kind of input
they want from people, many of them poor, who live in the area near
the mill. Nearly everyone at Friday’s planning
session agreed that community members should benefit from the
project as much as the developers who will build there or the city
will. The total cost depends on the type of project
the community chooses. The St. Louis-based architectural firm and
Chicago-based law firm who hosted the charrette in conjunction with
the IEPA will prepare a summary report by the end of the year,
according to IEPA programs advisor Heather Nifong. The report will be available to present to
the public in January. In the meantime, Nifong says community
members can call her and offer their suggestions. More than likely, though, at least the silos
will remain standing. Too many people commented on the intrinsic
beauty of the industrial site, developed just before the Great
Depression. Removing the silos would be unpopular, not to mention
costly. These structures were built to last —
estimates of the cost to raze them have ranged from $1 million to
$12 million. (Roy and Robert, who helped demolish
Springfield’s Fiat-Allis manufacturing plant years ago, say
that they would love to help tear the Pillsbury silos down, if it
comes to that.) However, implosion would also likely create
environmental hazards, which the IEPA would try to mitigate. The
silos, which once stored grain before it was ground into flour, are
coated with asbestos. Plus, Robert asserted, the silos, unused for
more than four years, are teeming with rats that will surely scurry
to his and others’ homes just across the street: “What they gonna do, put up a big net
to catch ’em?”
This article appears in Sep 29 – Oct 5, 2005.
