By BRANDON LaCHANCE

Staff writer

MENDOTA – Mendota has been through a lot over the last year and a half.

It started with a fire on Main Street in August 2022 and another fire on Illinois Avenue in December 2022. The two fires took businesses, historical buildings, and faith in Mendota’s motto, “The World’s Greatest Little City.”

The disasters also opened eyes and brought people together as Reimagine Mendota spread into the Community Heart & Soul Seed Grant Program, which has seeped into the community and into the City of Mendota.

Through government, non-profit organizations, business owners, and residents, efforts are being made to repair and improve the city.

Mendota City Clerk Emily McConville presented the process to a Community Heart & Soul meeting Nov. 18 at the Mendota Civic Center and met with The Mendota Reporter in mid-December to talk about different projects, grants, questions, and issues.

The block on Main Street where Waterfalls, apartments were burnt down, Campbell Dry Cleaning torn down

“The biggest thing is where Campbell Dry Cleaning was. We tore down the building because we knew it was contaminated,” McConville said. “In order to remediate, we needed to purchase or get Advanced Auto, which we finally did. The City of Mendota now owns it.

“We just submitted a federal grant in October to help remediate it because the estimate is $1.3 million. We know how estimates are and it could be more, and nothing is getting cheaper. We will find out in the spring if we receive the grant.

“We have a very good chance. Our narrative right now is very good for receiving the grant. We’ve had two fires, and we need something good to happen here. We’re hoping to get the grant. As soon as we know, the Advanced Auto building will come down and we’ll make the plans to start remediating, which will happen next fall.”

Engineers have said both the dry cleaning store and car part shop were built poorly.

Simple fixes are not working anymore as Advanced Auto is currently braced with wooden beams and there is a tank that needs to be removed, but if done, the building would collapse.

McConville said it would cost a lot of money to save the building and repair the surrounding property.

Annie Short, co-director of Mendota’s Heart and Soul group with Annie Brewer, was recently hired as a project director by the City of Mendota.

With ties to both groups, she is seeing the community wants and needs for areas such as the block on Main Street as well as the finances behind the rebuild.

“It could be a potential location for a Mendota community square, which is an idea that has come from the Community Heart & Soul Seed Grant Program,” Short said. “We could build an amphitheater, a band shelter, or a pavilion. People in the community have a lot of different ideas of what kind of community square looks like. I think those ideas will come up in the discussions over the next 3-6 months.

“If we were to develop a community square what would people want as part of it? How much do we want just a pavilion? Who wants to raise funds for it? It isn’t something the City of Mendota will have money toward because we have other things needing fixed or repaired. Those will be a few of the questions discussed.”

Short and McConville both agree the block would be a prime location because traffic shifts through all day and it is short walking distance from the train station, which could attract out of town visitors as well as Mendota, Illinois Valley residents.

With her new employment, Short will be advancing projects with a more hands-on objective.

“The benefit of me being hired by the city as project director, is we’ll take what we’ve learned the community wants in Mendota through the Heart & Soul program and work through with what is feasible and most impactful,” Short said. “With me working at the city, Emily and I have talked about me having time to meet with each of the department heads and ask what they need, their visions, what they want to see, and how then does that overlap with what came out of Community Heart & Soul.

“We then want to start putting together work groups, action plans, and priorities to really map out over the next year. Again, we’re still waiting for the grant to give us money to plan.”

Reimagine Mendota and Heart & Soul are finalizing the mapping of the ideas the group received from the community and finalizing value statement. 

Reimagine Mendota is going to apply to become a 501(c)(3) to become a true non-profit organization and a partnering arm to the city to help move projects forward and raise funds to make them happen.

Comprehensive Plan

Part of the grant includes money for downtown planning.

The City of Mendota cannot do much as it waits to see if the grant is approved, which will be in the spring as early as March and as late as May, but steps are put in place when/if it does.

A comprehensive plan will be put in place that prioritizes a starting point, prioritizes stages of an action plan, and where to spend money next.

Intersection of 8^th and Main streets

The grant will also be applied to one of the most head scratching intersections in Mendota.

“The intersection of Eighth Street and Main Street has always been on my radar. It’s not legal because you come across the railroad tracks and there is a yield sign,” McConville said. “You can’t have that type of thing within so many feet of the tracks because you could potentially block someone because you’re waiting for cars to go by and someone is on the tracks, and a train is coming.

“Our hope is to straighten out the intersection and make it a four-way regular, standard intersection. We don’t know the details or how we want to map it out yet, but the intersection will be part of the grant also.”

Damaged buildings on Illinois Avenue

One of the most asked questions in Mendota is, “Why is it taking so long to fix Illinois Avenue?”

The question is loaded. So are the answers.

The quick, easy answer is insurance companies are involved. Along with business owners, City of Mendota, and money.

“The building (which was the old Meyers Furniture store) on Illinois Avenue has a temporary front cover,” McConville said. “We didn’t want the building to get any more damage through the winter, so we closed it in. We’ll be fixing the roof. We did get an estimate. We are going to restore the building.  

“The cost to tear it down was going to be about $150,000. To rebuild a building that size, 10,000 square feet, you’re looking at $250-350 per square foot, which would be somewhere around $3 million to build a building up to code. I’m not sure we could find someone who would want to put that kind of money into a building.

“We can restore it. We have some insurance money because it was insured through the city. The building wasn’t in great shape to begin with. It is in a TIF, so we can use TIF funds to help restore the building also.”

The new design for the building isn’t 100 percent complete, but the City of Mendota, which owns the building, wants to create an historic front and a beautiful building at half the cost of constructing a brand-new structure.

The building on the corner of Illinois Avenue and Jefferson Street owned by Lalo and Adriana Delao is in a different stage of the process.

“The building on the corner of Illinois Avenue is privately owned. There are four lots owned by three different people between the city building and the building on the corner,” McConville said. “No one is going to buy the lot that is 20-feet wide and build something there in the middle of two empty lots.

“It seems like if you’re going to buy one of the lots, someone is probably going to have to buy them all. If we get someone who wants a lot and wants to build something there, we’re going to have to negotiate some kind of package or plan for the other lots.”

Code enforcement

One off-the-books claims for the start of the fires and reasons why buildings are having a tough time operating businesses or attracting new business owners is because they’re behind on codes.

This can be tricky as business, money, livelihood, safety, and community are all involved in a tight, little, massive package.

“Another thing we’re going to work on as a city is code enforcement. We’re going to work with the owners to ensure their buildings are safe,” McConville said. “Owning a business is like owning a house where no one is telling you, you have to keep your house safe. That’s how it is downtown.

“As a business owner, you should have the same responsibility as you do for your home to keep it safe. Most of these buildings are over 100 years old. There is going to be major maintenance that is going to happen at some point. They don’t stand for 100 years, go through changes, added electricity, gas, and stay the same they were when created.

“We do have building codes that are supposed to be maintained. But you can’t walk into a building and know if they’re up to code or not.”

Short, like others, would be sad to see the corner building or any other historical building in Mendota go.

However, she added other opportunities could arise.

“Code enforcement was brought up during Heart & Soul meetings and events. It sounds great until the pocketbook is involved to pay for the updates,” Short said. “Emily and I have talked about meeting with business owners to see what they need and if we do code enforcement, also, what are the needs.

“We may need to look for grants and see if there is federal assistance. The goal isn’t to put people out of business. We want businesses in Mendota and we want them to thrive. But the only way downtown Mendota can get better is to make sure the buildings are safe and stable.

“Also, if we want more people to bring businesses, if they’re paying hundreds of thousands to get the building up to code to have a business, it’s hard for a startup to invest in the codes and their business.”