A wonderful thing happened to Galesburg on its way to what appeared to be certain economic disaster during the 1982 recession. It refused to die.
Residents rallied to seek solutions, even as 2,400 jobs in the area were marked for extinction and the unemployment rate soared to 20 percent in this community of 35,500.
Citizens reached into their pockets to spur economic-recovery projects. And community leaders dispatched emissaries to persuade out-of-town businesses to move here while leaning on lawmakers in Springfield and Washington for additional help.
”Everything we did was geared to creating new jobs,” said Jerry Miller, mayor of this city in west central Illinois, which is the birthplace of poet Carl Sandburg. ”We knew we had to generate ideas ourselves. And the formula worked.
”Even though we`ve gone through some hard times, there are about 20 companies that already have moved to Galesburg, ranging from retailers to light manufacturers and employing from as few as 15 to as many as 100 people,” Miller said.
As Galesburg prepares to mark its sesquicentennial in 1987, Miller predicts the community`s efforts will have produced 1,000 replacement jobs by the end of the year.
”The unemployment rate is down to about 15 percent,” he said. ”That`s still unacceptable. We`re shooting for 5 or 6 percent at the most. And I think we can do it.”
This city`s economy hit rock bottom in 1982, the year of its 145th anniversary.
Already in the midst of the recession, its two largest employers, the state-operated Galesburg Mental Health Center and Outboard Marine Corp., announced plans to phase out operations involving 2,400 jobs within a few years.
Real estate and personal property tax revenues dropped. Seven-hundred homes went up for sale. Spending for goods and services among area merchants diminished. Prices for farm goods in this agricultural heartland became depressed. The results were devastating.
During the next two years, welfare and jobless claims soared. The number of telephone calls related to unemployment to a local mental health crisis line increased 125 percent.
Perhaps worst of all, as the recession deepened, Galesburg was selected by print and electronic media as a cameo of the economic ills that confronted many similar communities.
”To us, that kind of publicity was the pits,” Miller said.
Two of Galesburg`s major job-generating projects are a result of state assistance. But neither would have borne fruit without efforts by business leaders, local politicians and labor leaders, said Fred W. Apsey Jr., former chairman of the Galesburg Area Chamber of Commerce Economic Development Council.
Through private subscription, citizens raised $275,000, the bulk of it within 60 days, to purchase a 71-acre site for a proposed $38 million medium- security state correctional facility.
Then, with the help of area lawmakers, such as state Rep. Carl E. Hawkinson and the late state Sen. Prescott E. Bloom, both Republicans, Galesburg officials successfully lobbied Gov. James Thompson to locate the 900-bed institution here.
The prison is expected to produce 450 jobs and a $7 million to $8 million annual payroll, Apsey said.
At the same time, community leaders began working with state officials in an effort to convert the soon-to-be-abandoned mental hospital into another tool for economic development.
After a feasibility study by James B. Peterson, a Chicago management consultant, plans were laid to convert the 160-acre site and its 100 buildings into quarters for a variety of private and public enterprises.
Last Jan. 1, the state gave Galesburg title to the property for a token $1 and the city renamed the site Hawthorne Center, an undertaking that already has produced 200 jobs and is expected to yield another 200 by the end of next year, Apsey said.
Under the plan, qualified applicants that are nonprofit organizations will receive title to land and buildings they select for $1. Others will be charged only a nominal sum, Chris B. Lear, city coordinator for the center, said.
”We`re looking for property owners, not tenants.”
In a further effort to attract enterprises to the Hawthorne site, Galesburg will use funds from a $3.5 million grant from Thompson`s Build Illinois fund, Hawkinson said.
As a result of Peterson`s findings, a $1.5 million, 100-bed nursing home will be constructed at the center by a private developer, an enterprise that alone will create 100 jobs.
A business and technology facility, funded by a $500,000 state grant and geared to assist small businesses, will open around June 1. In addition, two other groups will open facilities for the care of developmentally disabled persons and the mentally ill.
Through a combined effort of Galesburg`s two hospitals, a group of Peoria physicians expect to open within a year the city`s first cancer radiation center, a $2 million undertaking.
Other space at the center also has been allocated for offices, overnight delivery services, light manufacturing, storage and warehousing.
In all, 220,000 square feet of the buildings have already been committed of the 650,000 square feet available for occupancy, Peterson said.
Marshaling public and private financial muscle did not end with these projects, Miller said. Dollars from both sectors also are working to revitalize downtown Galesburg.
Recently, private-business interests raised another $350,000 to help buy Kline`s department store on Main Street after seven other major retailers had moved or closed their doors.
Kensington Properties Inc., a Minneapolis real estate developer, is spending $7 million to convert the 250-room Custer Hotel into 74 residential apartments for the elderly. The hotel, which opened in 1915, is on the National Register of Historic Places, said Sara Frick, complex administrator. Next door, a $2 million renovation of the equally historic Orpheum Theater is planned to provide a home for the Galesburg Symphony and other performing arts as well as classic films. A grant from the state`s civic center program is financing this effort.
Meanwhile, the Burlington Northern is deploying 40 to 45 trains a day through the more than $70 million freight yard it has constructed at the confluence of five of its main lines here, according to Joe Yeager, terminal superintendent.
Miller concedes that Galesburg hasn`t totally recovered from the economic blows it sustained nearly five years ago.
”But we`ve talked to a number of companies that are considering us as a potential location when the economic turnaround really kicks in,” he said.
”I believe we`ll be at the top of their lists. Thanks to the community effort, they now are aware of where Galesburg is and the tremendous assets it has to offer.”
