ROCHELLE — Rochelle City Manager Jeff Fiegenschuh said last week that demolition of Hickory Grove is currently slated for late winter or early spring if all goes to plan. 

At a meeting this summer, the city council approved an agreement with the ownership group of the Comfort Inn & Suites hotel next door to properly disconnect the buildings to pave the way for demolition. Fiegenschuh said that another agreement involving a land swap with the hotel group will have to be done and go before the city council before other advancements on demolition can be made. 

The hotel owns a couple of parking spots in the Hickory Grove parking lot that the city wants for future development at the site. The hotel is currently looking at constructing an outdoor pool and has been negotiating with the city on a land swap to make sure the pool doesn’t inhibit any future development of the Hickory Grove property. 

“We’re finally just about there,” Fiegenschuh said. “Since we're subdividing on the property, we have to take it before planning and zoning and back to the city council. There's just a lot of things behind the scenes.”

Fiegenschuh hopes to have the property swapped and approved by the city council by the end of October. The city has approval to proceed with a grant that it got for the project. Demolition documents are about 80 percent done and he hopes to go out to bid this fall or early winter. 

The city purchased the Hickory Grove property in early 2020 for $1 with the intention of demolishing it and developing the property. Before the pandemic and unforeseen issues with the building, the city hoped demolition would take place last year. 

Fiegenschuh called issues with the building “extremely frustrating” and said it is “very disjointed.” There are multiple electrical systems inside and multiple HVAC systems. 

“It's essentially three or four different facilities in one building,” Fiegenschuh said. “It just seems we're always finding a new challenge to work out. There are utilities running from Hickory Grove into the hotel and we didn't know they shared utilities. How do we separate those? I think the hotel's server room was actually on Hickory Grove's side of the property. How do we take care of that? Very disjointed and frustrating.” 

Fiegenschuh said despite the frustrations, the goal of everyone working on the project is to redevelop the site and make it something the community can be proud of. That has made the work easier. 

The economic impact from an eventual development will depend on who purchases the site, Fiegenschuh said.

“We've had 3-4 different developers who have expressed some interest in the site from mixed use with housing and retail to larger retail,” Fiegenschuh said. “There's the opportunity the site could address two issues. Housing and the need for more retail.” 

The city specifically established a TIF district for the site’s redevelopment that can be used to incentivize a developer or pay for demolition expenses after the fact.

“I think there's the potential for a huge economic gain,” Fiegenschuh said. “But I don't want to over promise. That doesn't mean we're going to have this windfall of money coming into that TIF in the next 2-3 years. We want to make sure it's the right project. It's on a major intersection in our community and we want a project the community can be proud of and can support."

Once demolition goes forward, Fiegenschuh said the city plans to reach back out to those that have expressed interest in the site. He believes one in particular would be a great fit in the community and would fill a need, but he declined to say more. 

Demolition has to start and surprises inside the building have to stop before talks about the future can begin. 

“This building has been sitting there for so long, nobody really knows what's all in there behind the walls or underground,” Fiegenschuh said. “Part of the footings of the building are going to remain in place because they support the hotel. That's not a major issue, it's just there's things we've come across that nobody anticipated.”

The building was previously owned and overseen by the Ogle County Civic Center Authority board, which was under the Ogle County Board umbrella. 

That was a volunteer group that Fiegenschuh praised for doing “the best they could” in trying to stay open for years with little funding. The city decided to purchase the site so it could control it and likely would’ve had to deal with it later if it was abandoned. 

“It's an exciting project,” Fiegenschuh said. “And I know people want to know why it's just sitting there. It's a very complex project. It's one of the more complex projects I've ever worked on just because the building is essentially multiple facilities in one building. There's no real good blueprints for the facility. We're finding new challenges every time we go back in there."