Pekin is on the right track

November 29, 2009
By Billy Dennis

In Peoria, they shut down railroads so that connected developers can build next to bike trails. In Pekin, they use it to attract manufacturing jobs:

The Pekin City Council will conduct a special meeting Monday to authorize the sale of property in the Riverway Business Park to Wheelworx North, among three other agenda items.

[snip]

“It’s a continuation of the diverse mix of businesses that we’ve been able to land in the Riverway Business Park,” said Pekin City Manager Dennis Kief. “It’s obviously a good thing in these poor economic times that we’ve gone through. The ability to land somebody like that is a pretty good sign.”

The business hopes to hire more than 30 people once the building, planned for ground-breaking this spring, is finished.

That’s 30 new manufacturing jobs. During a recession. How could this possibly be?

Pekin Mayor Rusty Dunn said Wednesday that access to rail transportation in the park, along with other existing infrastructure, helped to land the business.

At all of Peoria’s unemployed people can go for a nice walk or a bike ride.

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2 Responses to “ Pekin is on the right track ”

  1. Brian G on November 30, 2009 at 6:31 am

    It’s nice to be mentioned, even if you’re using us as a cudgel to make a point about Peoria. BTW, the owner of the railroad business is a former Pekinite.

    A little more background though, earlier this fall, the city allowed Cullinan Properties to skip a loan payment and extended the loan out for a number of years. The city also failed to note that Cullinan also had an obligation due to pay the St. Charles Mo. School District money for playground equipment due to an earlier TIF agreement. One of our councilmen proudly noted that we had a “personal guarantee” from Jeff Giebelhausen that the new note would be repaid so that the city could also float tax incentives to bring a Dunham’s sporting goods store to fill an empty Cullinan property. Hopefully, Pekin won’t have a situation like Peoria had with another local developer concerning a supermarket development.

    The city of Pekin is also about to bail out Bill Griffin and his investors who ponied up 25k each by purchasing the Dragon’s Dome.

    One last note, in Pekin one can buy an “adult gift” from a balloon shop and be taxed 8%, but a meal from Avanti’s is taxed 10%. I guess we know what the city is trying to promote!

  2. Pekinite on November 30, 2009 at 6:14 pm

    Kudos to Steve Brown who worked nonstop with the people to bring this business to our town. 30 new jobs = 30 less people unemployed. Nice work Steve…..