‘There are tools out there that can help businesses be successful and get going’

ROCHELLE — Back in 2018, the City of Rochelle’s National Register nomination for Rochelle’s Downtown Historic District was approved by the Illinois Historic Sites Advisory Council.

Historic districts act as a way of maintaining the history and telling the story of the community while providing access to a key financing tool in historic tax credits. The credits act as a key for struggling downtowns where property values sometimes do not justify the cost to improve historic buildings. The tax credits act as gap fillers and make projects less risky for financing and more attractive for investment. In order to access credits, redevelopment projects must honor the architecture and history of buildings. 

Currently, the city is trying to raise awareness of the downtown historic district designation and available tax credits for current business owners and potential future developers, City Community Development Director Michelle Pease said. 

“If someone were to do a $1 million project downtown, they could submit for up to 45 percent reimbursement,” Pease said. “It’s 25 percent from the state and 20 percent from the federal government. There are stipulations that have to be followed. If there’s a building within the historic district and somebody wanted to file and get those historic tax credits, they have to follow specific guidelines within the building. They couldn't take walls down or change the whole front facade. They’d have to follow the guidelines within that historical perspective of that building."

Pease said the downtown historic district tax credits have not yet been utilized in Rochelle, and that the process can be lengthy and detailed. Kennay Farms Distilling did consider it when it converted the former Hub Theater for its current use, but opted not to due to modifications the business had to make to accommodate its brewery and distilling process. 

The city has looked at buildings’ potential for use with the program in the past and plans to again in the future.

“We did a financial pro forma on the savings and loan building on one of the corners downtown,” Pease said. “We shared the pro forma with local and regional developers, but nobody took advantage of that. I'm working with Studio GWA out of Rockford, which designed Kennay Farms Distilling. I'm hoping to plan and be part of a developers' summit in the fall and have them present this information to local and regional developers to see if this is something we could assist them with for any projects downtown."

Pease said the downtown area currently has 6-7 vacant business spaces and she would like to see them all filled in the coming years to create more foot traffic downtown. Four of those vacancies are in the former Moore’s Hardware that was recently renovated by Seldal Properties. 

“Those will be filled up soon,” Pease said. “I'd love to see parts of Cherry Avenue kind of revamped. One of the big things that's been really helpful for us is our facade grant program. That has helped those businesses immensely. Just to be able to put $10,000 into your building and get $5,000 back from your city. That's huge for a small business and it goes a long way to making it look nicer. 926 Embroidery painted the front of its building and got a new sign. And it looks like a new building. I want to fill all of those vacancies and address any blight that we have. If it's a building that's able to be rehabilitated, that would be our top priority to rehab it to use the space. If that's not possible, it'd be looking at what would fit that space better. That's pretty important."

Along with the downtown historic district tax credits and facade grant program, the city also offers a signage program and has worked with businesses in the past on tax-increment financing (TIF) and Lee-Ogle Enterprise Zone development agreements. 

If a business is interested in the city’s facade grant program, it can contact the city’s community development department and the next application process starts Jan. 1. If a developer or business owner is interested in the downtown historic district tax credits, they can reach out to Pease directly for more information. 

“There are tools out there that can help businesses be successful and get going,” Pease said. “I think with COVID-19, people kind of slowed down and backed off, but now I think things are starting to pick up again and I want people to be aware of all the tools and resources that are here locally and at the federal and state level to be able to help with that.”

Pease said she’s enjoyed seeing new businesses and improvements downtown in recent years. The city has added to that with improvements of its own including flowers, plantings, benches and murals. 

“When we're having people that want to open up a business, people want to be downtown,” Pease said. “That's what they're asking about is downtown, which is great.”