ROCHELLE — At its July 22 meeting, the Rochelle City Council unanimously approved a resolution authorizing the execution of an agreement with the Lee County Industrial Development Association (LCIDA) for economic development services for the city.

The city's current in-house economic development director, Jason Anderson, will be retiring at the end of this year and its former industrial development manager, Peggy Friday, recently also retired.

LCIDA will perform economic development assistance to the city for the next 18 months, with up to 25 hours per week assisting City Manager Jeff Fiegenschuh with economic development work. Former State Rep. and current LCIDA CEO Tom Demmer will be the staff liaison performing the services. The agreement's annual fee will be $100,000 and will commence retroactively on July 1, 2024 and terminate Dec. 31, 2025. 

“Tom has always had a great working relationship with the city from when he was in the legislature and helped us out quite a bit and since he's come on with LCIDA he's had a great partnership with Jason,” Fiegenschuh said. “With Jason's retirement, I started looking for a way to continue the economic development success we've had. Tom does a very good job. He's well-connected and great to work with. It seemed to make sense as a way to continue our economic development program in a successful way as Jason transitioned out.” 

Fiegenschuh said that long-term, he believes a regional approach to economic development makes sense and the new agreement will allow for more partnerships and synergy with the City of Dixon and Lee County.

Demmer said he and LCIDA have been working with the City of Rochelle on “a lot of projects together for years.” As the City of Rochelle's industrial park has grown to the south, it's come into Lee County. Some of the City of Rochelle Railroad already runs into Lee County and some of its current “really highly sought-after” development parcels are already in Lee County, Demmer said.

“We came at it from the perspective of, 'This is a new opportunity to build a regional partnership,'” Demmer said. “When you try to attract an economic development project, there are some things that depend on where you are for infrastructure and utilities. But on a broader scale, things like workers and investments are on a much more regional scale. This was a great chance to do this with a lot of developments that are going to be happening in Rochelle and in Lee County. We're able to work together and make the most of this benefit for our entire region.”

Demmer was born and raised in Dixon and said he has long understood how interconnected the region is from his time in the area and in the state legislature. He said the chance to work with Lee County, the City of Dixon and the City of Rochelle to help the region thrive and grow into the future was “too good to pass up."

Within the past year, a 1,000+-acre site referred to as “the dual-rail megasite” that sits just south of the county line in Lee County has become one of the top areas for development in the state, Demmer said. That land is planned to be annexed into Rochelle, Demmer said. 

The site is one of the first in the state to get status as a vetted site from Intersect Illinois, a public-private partnership that does marketing. 

“We've entertained 12+ projects that have looked at that site as a result of that status,” Demmer said. “We're seeing a lot of interest. Rochelle has always been a hot place for logistics, cold storage facilities and food processing facilities. We've had a lot of interest from people in the sustainable fuels world. Rochelle already has a footprint there with the ethanol plant. There's been a lot of interest in different kinds of tech products such as electric vehicles, battery manufacturing or data center spaces. There's just a tremendous amount of interest in Northern Illinois today and when you look at the attributes Rochelle has with transportation infrastructure and the investments that have already been made in sewer, water, electricity and natural gas, we're just at the top of the list for a lot of these growing and emerging projects.”

Demmer praised the City of Rochelle for its past work on having infrastructure in place to land the next economic development project. He plans to continue that work, along with leveraging projects to draw down additional dollars from the federal and state government and local contributions to make sure Rochelle is in a good economic development position going forward. 

Fiegenschuh stressed that successful economic development and growth pays for government programs. The more economic growth and good-paying jobs Rochelle has, the more resources will be available to the city to pay for things like growing its utilities and hiring more public safety workers. 

“It's a privilege to be able to begin this partnership,” Demmer said. “For a long time, Rochelle has been on the leading edge of economic development in the state. Investments that have been made over generations in Rochelle have paid dividends. To be able to come into a place that already has a track record of success and is on the map already, it's a great privilege. I want to fight to leave things better than I found them. We're going to work together and do everything we can.”