Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space: Holiday storefront photo from Elgin Illinois

Elgin's downtown efforts are being noticed. See the post from Richard Layman's Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space blog regarding getting students involved in the effort. Click here for a map of all the windows decorated for Window Wonderland 2005. A hat tip to Richard for the communitywalk.com site that hosts our maps. I first saw the Google Map tool on one of his posts and applied it to our site.

Downtown demolition on city agenda

This from today's Courier News.

The city council is set to vote Wednesday on tearing down a quartet of vacant buildings, a move that could pave the way for more downtown redevelopment.

Also on the council's agenda is spending $20,000 to tear down the city-owned former Goodyear building directly north of the Elgin Law Enforcement Facility. The building occupies one corner of a downtown block that is largely taken up by the Grater Inc. cheese factory but which the city would like to see redeveloped.
Officials probably are not interested in seeing the Goodyear site redeveloped on its own, being more interested in a large-scale project that would include the majority of the block bound by Spring and Kimball streets, Douglas Avenue and Symphony Way, according to Deering.
"I think we would like to see a bigger plan, a bigger approach, maybe the whole block," he said.

The locations are as follows:
64 S. State St./Illinois 31
The Goodyear building directly north of the Elgin Law Enforcement Facility.
The former Amy Plumbing buildings at 58 Kimball St. and 271 N. Grove Ave .

The old Grant Park Elementary School at 265 N. Jackson St in the near west area is also scheduled for demolition.

Read the full story by Nathaniel Zimmer here.

Condos, kids' center added to ESO concert hall plan

These details on the proposed Symphony Center were reported in the Courier News today.

The Elgin Symphony Orchestra has added 200 condominiums and a children's "discovery center" to its proposal to build a 1,800-seat concert hall downtown, directly east of the new Gail Borden Public Library.

The hall would be located on the southern half of roughly 9.5 acres bound by North Grove Avenue and Ann, Kimball and Brook streets. The children's center and a four-level parking deck topped by a condominium tower would stand to the north.

Read the full article by Nathaniel Zimmer here.
Map of location.

Great American Family Diner Ribbon Cutting

The ribbon cutting took place on Thursday, December 15th.