Mayor Tom McNamara speaks on Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2023, at a news conference at the District 3 Rockford Police Station on New Towne Drive. His state of the city speech on Monday, May 30, 2023, from City Hall focused partially on public safety. (Photo by Kevin Haas/Rock River Current)
By Kevin Haas
Rock River Current
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ROCKFORD — Mayor Tom McNamara said in his State of the City address Tuesday that he will start meeting with aldermen this week to discuss details of a multifaceted deal to redevelop the long-vacant Barber-Colman complex.

Milwaukee-based developer J. Jeffers and Co. has been working on plans to bring a mix of apartments, townhomes and businesses to the south Rockford site along Main Street for more than a year. Doing so will require an incentive package from Rockford that hasn’t yet been revealed, but McNamara said he’ll bring it before council soon.

“We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. We can make Barber-Colman a shining jewel of reinvestment and resurgence,” he said. “We can and should support J. Jeffers and their effort to create a thriving $420 million mix of apartments, townhomes and businesses.

“This is the right thing for Rockford.”

Related: A look inside the history and decay of the Barber-Colman complex in south Rockford

McNamara’s mention of Barber-Colman was one of his last notes in his 35-minute State of the City speech delivered at City Council chambers. But it has the potential to be the biggest deal both in the coming year and during McNamara’s tenure as mayor. He said it could be the most transformational project in the city’s history.

“We want to leave our mark on our community, and if we want to make Rockford better tomorrow than it was yesterday, if we want to improve the quality of life for our residents — specifically those residents who live on the southwest side of Rockford — we need to approve this once-in-a-lifetime project.”

The Barber-Colman complex, with the Morgan Street bridge in the background, on Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2023, in south Rockford. (Photo by Kevin Haas/Rock River Current)

Protestors interrupt speech

The State of the City address, which McNamara delivered for a sixth time, is his chance to go over the highlights of the past year and foreshadow initiatives for the coming year.

Like other City Council meetings, it started with a public comment portion. Unlike other City Council meetings, those signed up to speak Monday were all supporters of the mayor’s office’s various initiatives such as Rockford Promise, Think Big and prisoner reentry programs.

However, the speech was interrupted about three minutes in by protesters who for several years have criticized police use of force and what they say are racist policies and actions by city police and McNamara’s administration.

McNamara recessed the speech for about seven minutes and the live feed to the speech was cut off while police inside City Council chambers removed the demonstrators.

McNamara said the speech was interrupted while he was about to thank city staff.

“A sincere thank-you to our city staff who have dealt with harassement for now going on three years from the same small group of individuals throughout our city,” McNamara said after restarting his speech.

When his address resumed, McNamara said that neighborhoods, public safety and economic development where his top three priorities.

Here’s a look at what McNamara highlighted, in order, during his State of the City speech.

City finances

McNamara said when he took office in 2017 the city faced a five-year cumulative deficit of $156 million. His administration responded by having a national expert review its budget line by line, and it had a resident-led task force examine city spending.

“Since then, I’m proud to tell you, that we have passed six balanced budgets. We’re making significant investments in deferred maintenance as well as capital replacement,” he said. “We have also stabilized our reserve funds. We rewrote our reserve fund policy and today we have more than $38 million in that fund than our policy requires us to have.”

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He said the city’s finances are in the best shape they’ve been in decades.

Neighborhoods

McNamara credited a wide range of programs for helping improve local neighborhoods, from the Rockford Promise program that has helped more than 200 students get full-ride scholarships to Northern Illinois University, to workforce development programs and the Forward for Fun initiative that provides grants for public events around the city.

Last year, the city partnered with Rockford Area Habitat for Humanity on a critical home repair program that provided fixes to 21 homes.

It also partnered with the Region 1 Planning Council, Habitat for Humanity and Rockford Public Schools to start turning 25 tax-delinquent vacant lots into new homes. The work is being done in the Emerson Estates Subdivision off North Springfield Avenue near Auburn High School, Kennedy Middle School and McIntosh Elementary School.

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He also put a spotlight on work with the Rockford Area Arts Council on creating a cultural plan, the addition of dozens of murals and other public art around the city and a Neighborhood Improvement Initiative that floods six high-crime neighborhoods with public resources.

“Public art does so much for a city. It inspires, enhances values and creates a sense of place for our residents as well as our visitors,” McNamara said.

He said the largest capital plan in Rockford history is improving neighborhood roads and major thoroughfares around the city, and the city is leading the state in replacing lead service lines.

“What makes us unique is not that we’re replacing those lines, but what makes us unique is that we are paying the full cost of that line replacement from the right-of-way all the way into our residents’ homes, which the majority of other municipalities in the state are not doing,” he said. “We are proud to eliminate this financial burden from our residents and this exposure to our system and our residents.”

Public safety

McNamara said most State of the City addresses for the past four decades have included the same talking points about public safety: increasing the police force, increasing lighting and increasing enforcement.

“We are never going to achieve success by saying or doing the same thing over and over again,” he said. “I’m happy to tell you, Rockford, we are doing things differently.”

McNamara said his administration’s approach is two-pronged and includes both investment in enforcement and intervention programs designed to stop the cycle of crime.

He noted investments in technology, including automated license-plate readers, and the partnership to create a co-responder team to handle mental health crises so police aren’t asked to do everything.

In an effort to provide transparency and accountability, he noted the creation of the Civilian Oversight Board, a seven-member commission that is undergoing training now and expected to review its first cases later this year.

McNamara noted recent statistical success in crime: violent crime is down 16%, property crime is down 9%, aggravated assaults are down 12%, robberies are down 23% and shots fired are down 29% through April compared to the same timespan last year.

“However, we know that we’re just one piece of this puzzle,” he said. “We need parents, we need schools, we need courts, we need the faith community and the business community to step up and be part of the solution.”

He also referenced a 2015 study from the Harvard University Center on the Developing Child that showed children who do well despite serious hardship have had at least one stable and committed relationship with a supportive adult.

“I would urge all of us: We can be that one caring adult,” McNamara said.

Economic development

The region’s first community investment fund — created  in partnership with Rockford Local Development Corp. and Northern Illinois Community Development Corporation — helped fund 30 home improvement projects in its first year, McNamara said.

He said the Think Big small business incubator for women- and minority-owned businesses had 92 graduates from its school of business last year and helped entrepreneurs open several storefronts.

Other projects on the horizon include Urban Equity Properties work to renovate a five-story building at 700 S. Main into the 60-unit Water Power Lofts and company’s efforts to open a grocery store and mid-century inspired lofts downtown. Urban Equity Properties also recently opened luxury apartments at the former Hanley building space at 301 S. Main St.

City Council members also approved a redevelopment agreement to renovate the former CondonShumway Seed Company building, once home to one of the largest seed companies in the world, and the vacant Mack Paper/Bartlett building into residential space.

He also highlighted expansion at Collins Aerospace, the relocation of Viking Chemical to the old Rockford Products facility and Ingersoll Machine Tools expansion and PCI Pharma’s plans to build a new $50 million facility in Rockford.

McNamara closed his speech by saying he was optimistic about Rockford’s future.

“I know that working together we can make Rockford a place that every single person that calls it home is proud to say that they are from Rockford,” McNamara said.


This article is by Kevin Haas. Email him at khaas@rockrivercurrent.com or follow him on Twitter at @KevinMHaas.

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