You should not expect any big transformational project to be straightforward. That's a takeaway from Part 2 of our series Hard Things about the heavy lifts and big dream efforts our society and community achieve.
Big projects are complex. And the more complicated they are, the more room there is for differences of opinion, vision, and resource gaps.
Former Bloomington Mayor Mboka Mwilambwe said you must have an incentive to do hard things. Maybe that's a crisis like a housing shortage or homelessness problem. Maybe it's a long-term community need like a stronger downtown that strengthens the entire community economy and provides a sense of place and identity. Maybe it's a public good or institution like the Bloomington library. What you should not expect from any of those, Mwilambwe said, is for progress to be linear.
"In our community what I have always found impressive is that people respond to the aspirations of their constituents. I would say it can happen in a zigzag way. It doesn't necessarily happen right away in the way that people wanted," said Mwilambwe.
Take the library for example. The expansion and refurbishment came only after a public vetting that eliminated other options — options that didn't get enough buy in. There was the idea of a satellite library on the east side of town. Downtown advocates didn't like that one. Another idea was to partner with Connect Transit on a combined library and bus transfer station. Mwilambwe said he didn't like that. It wasn’t welcoming enough and didn’t have enough space for events. Then, after a lot of planning and public input, the city council gave a thumbs down to a big expansion.
"At the time, I thought it's a little bit too much. It's going to be a little bit harder for the community to swallow, so let's go with maybe a scaled-down version of it that would still be reasonable and really good for the community," said Mwilambwe.
Finally planners hit the sweet spot, a substantial improvement that was not too costly.
The library is an example of an emergent consensus after a lot of proposals had failed tests of money, public support, and vision. It contrasts with rare instances of projects that only come to a decision point after consideration of all options. Mwilambwe said another example of public vetting of options is the housing shortage development incentives package. It took the community a while to accept there was a clear convincing need. People doubted the results of an Economic Development Council study.
"It was shared during my first year as mayor, and that was still not enough to push people toward at least the final product we had three years later. I think it took a number of conversations and others," said Mwilambwe.
Some said they didn't thing the community would agree with offering incentives. Mwilambwe said, finally, extensive conversations and a Regional Planning Commission study tilted the balance.
Another reason for that zigzag pattern on big projects is resource gaps. It took the Town of Normal seven years to get federal support to build Uptown Station. U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin once facetiously joked that seven years is a fast pace for the Senate, a joke with stinging truth.
Yet former U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said Uptown Station was key to all Uptown revitalization.
"That Amtrak station is what sparked that neighborhood to be transformed to where now you've got the children's museum, you got a Marriott hotel, you got other hotels, you got all kinds of restaurants. That would not have happened without local dollars, state dollars, federal dollars, to build the Amtrak station," said LaHood.
Here's a twist on the resource gap issue. Other interests may hungrily eye and then siphon off your project dollars.
Bloomington Mayor Dan Brady said when he was a state representative it took him nine years to line up everything needed to create an electronic birth and death record system statewide. Prioritizing money amid multiple worthy needs can be the heaviest part of the lift, even after lawmakers have signed off on the proposal.
"And every time that we began to have the amount of money grow needed to launch the project and buy the software and do all the things you need to do statewide, that money would be swept by a governor and used for other things," said Brady.
Yeah, that governor was Rod Blagojevich.
When Brady started the electronic birth and death record project in 2002, only three states had such systems. Illinois didn't finish until 2012. Brady said he finally had to get legislative agreement to use extra fees on certified copies of birth and death records instead of general revenue. He needed allies to do it. The State Medical Society was one key addition.
"Then we saw the clerk's association of the state said, ‘Wait a minute, we could use this to purge our voter rolls.’ When we first started this, clerks were cutting obituaries out of newspapers to purge their voter rolls. That's how they were doing things,” said Brady.
Brady said the Secretary of State's office took an interest so they could keep their drivers’ license records fresher. The Department of Human Services thought the project would help them administer child support.
“Now, the system is getting ready to go back into the shop for a complete overhaul,” said Brady.
The nine-year delay at a time of rapid technological change could have disrupted the project. Brady said it didn't for several reasons. He, the sponsor, stayed on top of it. He got to know the vendors. And key people in the Department of Public Health with important expertise and institutional memory stuck around long enough to see it through. You need a continuity of enthusiasm from elected officials, a driving force that is relentless.
"You have to eat, live, and breathe the project, have that public official who is so passionate about it, has the right contacts, can be the big cheerleader that needs to be and has the drive and consistency to stay with the program when all you hear is no," said Brady.
Sometimes resources needed for a big project are not yours to provide. Ray LaHood said one of the tougher things he did was to stand up a network of satellite health clinics for underserved and rural areas of his Central Illinois district where there was no other health access. That took 5 years. The problem was not a lack of federal money; it was a scarcity of people.
"What made it a hard lift was really convincing the healthcare institutions. They had to be committed to providing the health care professionals, doctors, nurses, paraprofessionals. And we were committed in Congress to providing the funding, that notion of collaboration," said LaHood.
Even when the stars of technology, legislation, and planning all align, Bloomington Mayor Dan Brady said a hard thing to do can stay difficult.
"The economy has gotta help you though, as well," said Brady.
There's a long list of projects delayed by a bad economy or a national financial crisis. One Uptown in Normal, Trail East and Trail West in Uptown, Downtown Bloomington and O'Neil Pool, just to name a few.
Sometimes hangups can be reputational. Mwilambwe said a number of initiatives including the downtown streetscape may have languished for years because the public did not like how the downtown arena was sold to residents 20 years ago. There were also management problems and at least the perception of a sweetheart deal at the arena. Mwilambwe said for years it destroyed the willingness of elected officials to take on those big swing projects. The stigma of the arena shaded out the possibility other projects could grow. Now that the arena has proved itself as a community asset that is drawing people to the downtown, and that more than one city council lifecycle has passed, Mwilambwe said it's easier to get council approval.
Once even narrow approval comes, he said a project can prove itself. He noted the initial $900,000 contract to do the downtown streetscape study passed only narrowly 5-4 after a lot of effort at persuasion.
"That also took us letting people know in the community, 'Hey, you need to do something about the downtown because it has been there for a long time and nothing seems to be moving.' There is money left on the sidelines that could really be used to reinvest," said Mwilambwe.
Subsequent votes have been easier to pass and may provide momentum for the other nine stages.
"The idea with the downtown was to at least be able to put together the money for the first phase which would serve as the catalyst so people can see what can be done and what's going to transpire," said Mwilambwe.
Mwilambwe said there has to be an incentive to do the hard things that are not crisis related, something to bring people together on a project that may not benefit everyone. Congress banned earmarks, also known as pork barrel spending, from 2010 to 2021.
Mwilambwe said without those it made compromise harder. When earmarks went away, Mwilambwe said it seemed some member of Congress simply gave up.
Coming Wednesday: In the final part of our series Hard Things, WGLT looks at what may be the next big generational effort to bring 220 mph high speed rail to the Midwest.
