Rochelle will be moving forward with a second phase of downtown-area improvements that will include a stage and public restrooms structure off North Main Street.

At its Sept. 22 meeting, the City Council approved a $3,127,095 bid from DPI Construction Inc. for phase two of its Rebuild Downtown & Main Street Grant Project, which will also include the reconstruction of three parking lots, a new parking lot on the corner of Washington Street and Second Avenue, the reconstruction of the alley between Fourth and Fifth avenues, and a new storm sewer on Fourth Avenue. The first phase saw other parking lots in the downtown area reconstructed.

The project stems from the city’s receipt of a grant for $1,151,794 for the downtown work in 2022. The project will be paid for through grant funds, downtown tax increment financing bonds, and landfill, hotel/motel tax and railroad funds.

Lincoln Highway Heritage Festival, which has historically been held in the downtown area, was held at Atwood Park this year due to the planned construction and the LHHF committee would like to hold the festival downtown again next year if construction allows.

“As soon as the bid is awarded, we’ll work with the contractors to get started,” City Community Development Director Michelle Pease said. “They will have to finish it within a certain amount of days. My concern is it will be pretty close to August, when the Lincoln Highway Heritage Festival takes place. Winter is going to slow us down a little bit. Hopefully we can get it done and it will be ready to go by August. But I’m not going to make that promise. In April when LHHF starts to really plan and promote its event, we’ll have conversations and see where we are at that point.”

The project has been in the works since the city received the grant in 2022 but it saw delays in the state releasing the funds. The stage and restrooms will make the downtown area more of a venue for events in the future and the city has been in talks with the Rochelle Chamber of Commerce about running the venue, which is a scaled- down version of previous considerations for the area.

“We previously looked at a downtown venue years ago for almost $13 million,” Pease said. “I’m pretty proud that we’re doing it for around $3 million and kind of accomplishing the same thing but on a more realistic pocketbook with grant funding.”

Other upcoming downtown work for the city will include the undergrounding of utilities in the alley between Lincoln Highway and North Main Street. That project will start in the coming weeks, Rochelle Municipal Utilities Superintendent of Electric Operations Blake Toliver said. The project will start on Seventh Avenue and move its way south.

The utility undergrounding will consist of “significant” alley construction and some of the alley portions will be shut down. The city is working with the post office to have its operations be interrupted as little as possible.

“We’ve also talked with the business owners along Lincoln Highway that use their rear entrances,” Toliver said. “The goal is to open it up during the day and work as far as they can and then backfill with rock or chips overnight so people can still cross over the alley if they need to overnight. There may be some overnight closures if needed and we’ll do everything we can not to impact businesses.”

The utility undergrounding is being done after past issues with semi trucks clipping wires in the area and to make it more aesthetically pleasing, Toliver said.

Some road closures of avenues in the area will take place as well during the project. Toliver said the project will take about six months to reach 80% completion, but he hopes to be ahead of schedule and finish by early 2026.

Another project currently underway in the downtown area is a new urban park at the former site of Vinny’s Barbershop off Fourth Avenue between two buildings that will feature a seat wall, walkway, plantings and a space for music or food trucks. That project is expected to be done by the end of September, Pease said.

City officials are excited to see multiple projects moving forward downtown.

“A venue space downtown has been talked about for a lot of years,” City Manager Jeff Fiegenschuh said. “The undergrounding work was in the budget when I started eight years ago. It feels good to see these things start to come to fruition. The downtown is a gathering space. The council asked that we focus on that when I was hired and we’ve done that. I’m proud of the work that our team has done to bring it to this point.”