As the president of Bloomington-Normal's first Busey Bank branch, Rob Fazzini supported some of the Twin Cities' best ideas. Busey Bank backed the Shoppes at College Hills, the Corn Crib, Coffee Hound and a pivotal change of ownership at Lucca Grill.
Another good idea: The History Makers award, launched in 2012 by the McLean County Museum of History while he was president of the board. Little did he know he'd one day be added to that lauded list of McLean County residents.
Fazzini joins Sally Rudolph and Father Doug Hennessy in the 2025 class of History Makers. The trio will be honored June 18 at the History Makers gala at Illinois State University.
Fazzini grew up in south suburban Bloom Township and first came to McLean County to attend Illinois Wesleyan University—an easy choice.
“I applied to one university and that was it,” he said.
Fazzini comes from a blue-collar family and “wasn’t a great student.” He said he didn’t even consider college until a few months before high school graduation.
“By then, there was not many options,” he said. “When I did get there, I decided studying would help achieve something. I bought a book on how to study, came down here and I graduated in the upper 10% of my class at a pretty fine university.”
He also met his future wife, Lynne, a “townie” from Normal at Illinois Wesleyan. They married within three weeks of graduation as Fazzini embarked on a career in the banking industry.
It was a career that would take him to every corner of the globe, including time living in Amsterdam, Greece and Taipei before the family of five returned to the Chicago area.
“Lynne and I had said when we go overseas, when it seemed like it was time to come back, it was going to be a family vote,” he said. “The family voted. I lost.”
An opportunity to open Bloomington’s first Busey Bank branch is what brought them back to Bloomington-Normal.
“All the places we’d been—this is the best place we’ve ever been,” he said.
Making an impact
Driving around town, Fazzini can see the impact he made on McLean County, noticing small businesses and capital improvements Busey Bank took on. He was also civically engaged, serving on the boards of the McLean County Chamber of Commerce, BroMenn Advisory Council, and the McLean County Museum of History. He chaired the committee that revitalized the Scottish Rite Temple as the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts, and served four years as the Ward 8 city councilman in Bloomington and led multiple leadership initiatives.
“I’m fortunate to have been named a History Maker but it was really Lynne and me,” he said. “This wasn’t done alone. All the big things I got accomplished—she helped. And if she didn’t, she was in the background making sure everything else was going right so I could devote time to special things.”
One of those “big things” was the Shoppes at College Hills, a $28 million project that, at first, Busey Bank was skittish about.
“The first time I presented it to the board, they turned it down,” he said. “Lynne said, ‘One of the problems, Rob, is you don’t know anything about shopping.’”
Lynne put Paco Underhill’s Call of the Mall on Fazzini’s reading list and pitched Chico’s as a staple tenant in the future shopping center—which is still there today. He took a new proposal to the board, recruited partner banks to join them, and got the loan approved.
“If you make loans and are right 99.5% of the time, you’d be an average banker,” Fazzini said. “You had to turn a lot of people down. My goal in life is to help people realize their dreams, but I’m turning down three out of every four people. So, I better be good at how I’m turning down people.”
Fazzini learned how to soften the blow and coach loan applicants toward better proposals.
“I gave them all the reasons they were going to take more risk than there was reward, and I gave them specific examples of why what they wanted to do wasn’t a good idea at this time in their life,” he said.
Fazzini said it’s rewarding to see projects thriving around town, but like his clients, his failures are as important to him as his successes. He lost a 2019 attempt to become McLean County Auditor. And in 2014, while serving on Bloomington’s city council, Fazzini championed a modified ward system, in which some seats are elected at-large.
“Our city council could have put a referendum out. All we had to do was vote,” he said. “And I couldn’t get enough councilmembers to vote.”
Fazzini and a team of volunteers gathered 1,236 signatures to get his referendum on the ballot—and lost.
“The more I thought about it, the more I felt like that was successful,” he said. “Instead of in front of nine people on a city council, I got it in front of all the citizens. I saw democracy in action.”
He said his four years on the Bloomington City Council were rewarding and frustrating. He hopes the council leans into a diversity of ideas and disagreement, saying that's where innovation comes from.
“Sometimes you don’t get what you want, but you tackle the problems—and I still think we ought to be a modified ward system,” he said. “It’s gonna happen. I just hope I’m around to see it.”
