Chris Sutter is among the first 18 people to move into the apartment complex being built in what Cullinan Properties bills as its super-regional development in Joliet.

He was living in Wheaton and needed to shorten his drive to work at the Pontiac Correctional Center, where Sutter is a correctional officer.

“I saw it driving by,” Sutter said of The View apartments. “The construction was interesting to me.”

The construction is easy to see, sitting in the northeast corner of the crossing of Interstate 55 and 80.

An estimated 230,000 vehicles a day go past Rock Run Collection, the development that includes The View apartments, the Hollywood Casino Joliet that opened in August, and what is said to be 420,000 square feet of retail and restaurant construction that will begin in the coming months.

“There’s not a better piece of real estate in the country,” Vincent Corno, senior vice president of real estate for Dick’s Sporting Goods, told the Joliet City Council last week.

Dick’s, which plans to build a 120,000-square-foot Dick’s House of Sport at the site, is a beneficiary of a $37 million incentive package the City Council approved to applause from those attending the meeting on Tuesday.

The city will issue $37 million in general obligation bonds, which come on top of $102.5 million in bonds previously issued for the Rock Run Collection project, to pay for development of the site for a Dick’s House of Sport and another 300,000 square feet of retail and restaurant development.

“I know this is a big step financially,” Corno told the council. But he predicted municipalities from across the country will look toward Joliet as an example of how to encourage retail development.

The Rock Run Collection project would be unique if it brings a big retail-and-restaurant development to reality at a time when online shopping has eroded brick-and-mortar retail sales.

It should not take long to find out if Joliet will get a return on its investment.

Corno said Dick’s will begin construction this summer and open its House of Sport – a combination store and recreation center with a playing field, climbing wall and other attractions – by back-to-school time in 2027.

City officials say they also expect to see construction start this summer on much of the other 300,000 square feet of retail and restaurant development covered by the $37 million bond issue.

“We know it’s going to be monumental to get 300,000 square feet built in an 18-month window, but we’re committed to do that,” Mayor Terry D’Arcy said before the unanimous vote by the City Council for the Rock Run Collection incentive.

A Cullinan executive said that means another 50 stores and restaurants are coming with the Dick’s House of Sport.

City officials say taxpayers are protected in the new $37 million bond issue by a requirement that stores and restaurants open before developer Cullinan Properties gets any money. The $102.5 million in bonds issued in 2022 did not have that requirement.

Joliet has been trying to develop the site since a previous developer was thwarted by the Great Recession of 2008.

Cullinan bought the property in 2015 and has been working on the project since.

Representatives from Cullinan for years have billed the future development as a super-regional project that will attract shoppers, diners and visitors from far beyond Joliet.

A Cullinan office trailer on site includes a map on a wall that outlines the prospective market that the developer believes it can attract to Rock Run Collection.

It runs as far north as Rockford including the entire Chicago region. It goes west to the Mississippi River while taking in Davenport, Galesburg and Peoria. The potential market extends south to Bloomington and east to South Bend, Indiana.

The location at the crossing of Interstates 55 and 80 has been considered ideal but has required significant public investment, including a new $93 million interchange opened in 2024 to provide access to the property.

“It’s easy for businesses to go to another location if they want to, but businesses want to be in Joliet,” Kristi Johns, vice president of marketing said while providing a tour of the site last week. “There are other cities but not better than Joliet if you look at accessibility.”

The biggest development at the site so far has been Hollywood Casino Joliet.

A Chipotle at the interchange is the first restaurant to open. Chick-fil-A and Culver’s also are coming.

Construction has started on a seven-story Drury Plaza Hotel.

A Ricky Rockets Fuel Center also is under construction.

New tenants began moving into The View in April. Johns said leases are in process for 150 potential tenants. Cullinan has developed 264 apartments so far, and another 306 are coming in the second phase of the project.