The mayor of Lincoln fought hard to keep Logan Correctional Center from closing. With a final decision made, he’s now concentrating on what will happen to the property when the women’s prison leaves town.
When the state told Mayor Tracy Welch it planned to close Logan, he implored officials to avoid leaving “another eyesore in our community.”
“If you’re going to close the facility down, remediate the property now while those of you who made the decision have the power and ability to do so. Don’t leave it for somebody else, and don’t leave it for us.”
Logan is the most recent blow in a community that has taken hit after hit.
In the past 10 years, several major employers vanished, including the 2022 closure of Lincoln College after 157 years in the Logan County city of about 13,000 people. Another small Christian college closed a year after that. And two decades ago, the state-owned and operated Lincoln Developmental Center [LDC], a school and psychiatric hospital for people with developmental disabilities, shut down.
“When it closed, the state did nothing with that property,” said Welch. “The buildings are terrible. The roofs are falling in. It’s overgrown; there’s trees everywhere. It’s hideous. We have been trying to tackle that for a long time.”
The state hasn’t given Lincoln a timeline for closing the prison. Welch said employees have already begun looking for jobs.
“Those officers, they have a choice: Stick around and wait for them to shut the doors or start looking elsewhere,” he said. “Maybe it’s within DOC [the Department of Corrections]. Maybe it’s another industry. The bottom line is, they’ve got families. They’ve got kids, and lives, and houses and bills. I think they’re trying to ensure their futures instead of waiting for someone else to do it for them.”
A New York Times article published in the wake of Illinois’ decision to close Logan primarily zoomed in on Lincoln’s losses, while noting the local pride and scrappy resilience of its residents.
“I had mixed feelings about it when I read it,” said Welch. “The things that were highlighted, you can probably see in a lot of communities. We’re not oblivious to the fact that we have blighted conditions. But we also have programs in place that are helping drive to a better community.”
Tourism
Lincoln is betting its future, in part, on tourism. The city hired Scott McCoy, the former Pontiac mayor who, a few years ago, implemented a Route 66-focused strategy in nearby Atlanta.
“We had a lot of work ahead of us,” said Welch, and not a lot of time before the summer peak of Route 66’s centennial year.
“We had a Route 66 Centennial commission. It’s been formed for a couple years. But without a lot of push and drive, and then there’s been a lot of change in positions, it just wasn’t getting a lot of traction.”
Welch said McCoy kicked preparations into overdrive, accomplishing two or three years’ worth of work in about eight months.
Included in that was launching a Route 66 museum, located in a vacant bank building with the world’s largest penny positioned as a photo op in the adjacent parking lot. The first thing added to the museum’s collection was a Model O scale railroad set donated by collector John Ruh depicting scenes from the Mother Road’s eight states along the journey from Chicago to Santa Monica Pier.
In a much-debated change, the city moved a roadside attraction that previously sat outside city limits into Downtown Lincoln. It’s touted as the world’s largest covered wagon, complete with Abe Lincoln as the driver, and is now prominently featured in a city park near shops and restaurants.
Economic stimulants
The new museum couldn’t fill the huge bank building at the corner of Broadway and Chicago streets. The back side is earmarked for a future business incubator, giving startups a chance to pilot their businesses without the overhead of a brick-and-mortar storefront.
“When we took it to council, it was: We want to buy the building. We can stand up a tourism program. But we need to get serious about economic development,” Welch said.
Tourism is part of that strategy, driving out-of-town traffic into Lincoln to not simply stop for a photo op, but stay awhile.
“The museum is great; it’s Route 66. But the intent of the museum is to do something unique, get the people out of their cars and shop downtown, spend money in gas stations and stores, stay in hotels overnight.”
Tourism is only part of the strategy to revitalize Lincoln.
Last year, Illinois announced a $500 million site readiness initiative targeting five properties, including the 100-acre LDC site.
“They’re not just giving us the property; they’re going to remediate it,” said Welch. “But they want some ideas from us.”
Ideas include residential housing and tiny homes for veterans. Welch wants to see community green space and some commercial development at the edge of the property bordering a highway. A new juvenile detention center, the Monarch Youth Center, recently opened on the eastern edge of the property.
Welch said the state’s instructions are to push for economic development.
“That’s the message we got from the state, is hey, green space is wonderful, but this is an economic development initiative. We want to know what you should do to help grow your economy and, in turn, the state’s economy.”
Working with state Sen. Sally Turner, the city organized a task force to coordinate with the state. Welch said the project is still in the meetings phase, with no clear timeline yet.
“It could be next year. It could be the year after that,” he said.
A city-funded economic development grant attacks two goals: kickstarting businesses and addressing vacant buildings in various states of decay.
“We’ve given out probably $400,000 in grants for that, at $7,500 a piece,” Welch said. “Looking at those blighted conditions, we wanted to turn that around. A lot of these people that are getting these grants—they’re putting windows in. New doors. New roofs. Tuckpointing. If $7,500 is all it took to incentivize that work, I’d say it’s working.”
