Unilever Closing Downtown Plant

The Unilever plant at State and Highland is closing. While the loss of a business and the jobs it provides is never a positive. In the case of a manufacturing facility with no room for expansion, located in a revitalizing downtown, it is not unexpected.

Below are two excerps from the Riverfront Master Plan created in 2000.

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This parcel's high visibility from the Highland Avenue bridge, Walton Island and the Civic Center/Cultural Campus demands that the building be more aesthetic and less of a wall blocking the views from the west side. Temporary artwork placed on the east façade could work into a cultural theme of the Civic/Cultural Campus, with long term replacement of the building with a more human scale architecture a long-term goal. A walkway along the water's edge linking Highland Avenue to Kimball Avenue or Foundry Park would continue the riverwalk north to Judson College. A canoe chute/fish ladder on the west bank would create a longer stretch of navigable water in Elgin.

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Lipton Industries is a valuable corporate member of the community that would benefit by relocating to a more appropriate industrial site that enhances their business development plan. The City and Lipton should begin to negotiate a transition process that would allow redevelopment of this site in a 3 - 5 year time frame. Redevelopment site uses should be flexible to take advantage of unforeseen market opportunities to capture corporate, residential or commercial uses that would benefit from a high visibility site on the Fox River in the heart of downtown. Parking for the new site uses will need to be accommodated on site and partially in off-site areas.

Read the article in today's Daily Herald.