Summer is in its glory, vacations are ongoing, pool days are fun, and county fairs are coming up on the schedule. You know what that means?
Demolition derby time!
Many of us as a community attend two or three county fairs in the area every summer to watch the demo derbies. It’s not just about seeing junkyard cars crash into each other until there’s only one vehicle left churning away at the dirt. It’s about our enjoyment and the shared experience of seeing a victor emerge from a field of beat-up old vehicles that thrills us all.
But our communities don’t just come together for the thrill of a demolition derby.
We also unite in a different kind of demolition derby every summer – one that’s about collective effort and community pride. We’re on a mission to rid our neighborhoods of old, abandoned properties, paving the way for new opportunities and a brighter future for all. From Albany to Compton, we’re all in this together, transforming our towns one structure at a time.
Here in the Twin Cities and beyond, our local governments take on the responsibility of removing abandoned properties to benefit our residents’ health, safety and welfare. Once a structure is demolished and the area cleaned up, the empty lots are prepared for safe and beneficial uses as directed by our local governments.
In Sterling, the Illinois Housing Development Authority’s Strong Communities Program has made a significant impact. Over the past two years, the city has received more than $500,000 from this program. These funds have been instrumental in demolishing abandoned structures and rehabilitating qualified properties, giving them a new lease on life. Managed by the city, the funds are not used for private home improvements “but to return vacant residential properties to productive and taxable use,” according to the Illinois Housing Development Authority’s website.
Thanks to this program, 13 abandoned homes have been demolished, greatly enhancing the cleanliness and safety of our neighborhoods. And with more structures slated for demolition in the coming years, the positive changes will continue thanks to this grant.
Amanda Schmidt, superintendent of Sterling’s Building Department, refers to the Strong Communities Program as a great resource that helps the city remove blight from our neighborhoods and, by doing that, provides an incentive for neighboring property owners to clean up and rejuvenate their properties, too.
This helps make our community a cleaner, safer place for everyone to live in. Many others and I agree with that sentiment. I thank Schmidt and the Building Department for their perseverance in cleaning up our neighborhoods by removing these problematic properties and giving other properties a second chance to become a home for a family again.
In Rock Falls, a $2.2 million state grant is being used to demolish the former Micro Industries property. A few people don’t want to see this demolition occur, but most do. City Administrator Robbin Blackert said she looks forward to the new opportunities that will follow the demolition and removal of this condemned structure. Once that has been completed, the plan for this property is to use it for parking, commercial and mixed-use development, which will add a new, refreshed look to Rock Falls’ downtown.
Blackert said that she would appreciate it if our legislators in Springfield created an Industrial Sites Reclamation Act similar to the Mines Reclamation Act. Under this act, a fund would be created, and those funds would be used to pay the costs of removing old, abandoned, unsalvageable structures rather than communities having to compete for underfunded grant resources to pay those costs. Where these funds would come from is to be determined, but that’s a good idea to bounce around, and our state representatives should talk about this idea with Blackert and other administrators who have the same problems in their communities.
A reclamation program would be a great way to resolve these problems in a timely manner rather than a community waiting years to obtain a grant that can be used to remove these dangerous eyesores from our communities.
So, once the former Micro Industries buildings have been removed, who will ensure its history will be preserved for future generations?
There is a local organization that does just that. The Sterling-Rock Falls Historical Society’s mission is to preserve the history of our communities. We can be certain that the history and legacy of the former Micro Industries buildings will be preserved by this wonderful group of people who work hard to keep the history of our communities available for future generations to learn about through pictures, clippings of newspaper articles, and recordings of stories and tales of the activities that these properties once hosted during their lifetime.
If not for them, future generations and others in our community would not know what was made or who made it at this location or other places that have faced a similar fate. Demolishing dilapidated, dangerous buildings that cannot be saved for another day must be done for residents’ health, safety and welfare where these structures exist. Too often, we have seen what happens when a building long ignored collapses, as one recently did in Davenport, Iowa.
Several years ago, it happened in Morrison, in addition to recently in Clinton, Iowa, and Morris. It can happen again someday if communities don’t stay on top of the need to remove the old so that the new can be brought in to renew and rejuvenate the community for its future benefit.
- Jim Wise is a Sterling city alderman.