St. Charles aldermen recommend funding for St. Charles History Museum, St. Charles Business Alliance

St. Charles alderpersons have given preliminary approval to the funding requests of the St. Charles History Museum and the St. Charles Business Alliance.

At the St. Charles City Council’s Government Operations Committee meeting on Feb. 6, alderpersons recommended approval of a $50,000 funding request for the St. Charles History Museum, which is what the museum received last year. The funds for the History Museum are derived from the city’s hotel motel tax revenue stream.

As St. Charles History Museum Board President Steve Gibson told alderpersons, the board’s accomplishments last year included the completed installation of enhanced security measures.

“We now have cameras throughout the building,” Gibson said. “We had an incident a couple of years ago where some kids jumped off the parking garage onto our roof and played around on the tiles.”

The board last year also funded additional hours for the museum’s collections manager position which will help in making sure the museum’s artifacts are preserved correctly.

“We have some 15,000 artifacts,” Gibson said. “Those artifacts have to be preserved in a certain way to make sure that they last.”

The museum has several activities planned for this year, including guided walking tours this summer, the return of the History Mystery Restaurant Walk this fall and new children’s programming, including an event called packing for prairie life.

“We basically show youngsters the things that prairie pioneers brought with them when they came here in the old Conestoga wagons,” Gibson said.

Plans also call for revamping the landscaping around the museum.

“We’re going to do 1930s plants, which kind of ties into the era of roughly when the museum was created,” he said.

The museum is located in the 1928 McCornack Oil Company building at 215 East Main Street. The building served St. Charles as a gas station from 1928 until 1990.

Founded as the St. Charles Historical Society in 1933, the St. Charles History Museum has been collecting, preserving, and presenting St. Charles history ever since.

Alderpersons also recommended approval of a $698,600 funding request for the St. Charles Business Alliance, which is what the organization received last year. The funds come from two sources – $265,000 of anticipated proceeds from special service area 1B and $436,600 from the city’s general fund.

The 2023-2024 year represents the fifth year of the St. Charles Business Alliance’s existence. The St. Charles Business Alliance formed in 2019 after the Downtown St Charles Partnership merged with the Greater St. Charles Convention and Visitor’s Bureau.

The group’s accomplishments this past year include launching five new interactive murals in the downtown and launching the Travel St. Charles app.

“We’ve found a lot of success with the app and continue to find new ways to collaborate with other community groups and highlight the amazing businesses and culture that we have here in St. Charles,” St. Charles Business Alliance Executive Director Jenna Sawicki told alderpersons.

The St. Charles Business Alliance also launched the Made in St. Charles program.

“This maker program highlighted six local businesses whose products are made right here in St. Charles,” Sawicki said.