Elgin's "Successful" Downtown

If you will recall, I asked the question about the wisdom of dumping another $8 million into the River Walk after the lack of success with streetscaping schemes over the years, Festival Park, the condos, Prairie Rock, Walton Islands, the Overlook, the library...
Why throw good money after bad?
Schock's answer shocked me. He said these projects have been successful because property values in the downtown district have gone UP.
So I took a little drive and snapped some photos of downtown TODAY. I've got to admit, it looked worse than I thought it would. I didn't have any trouble parking, that's for sure!

The Tower Building has space for rent. That's no surprise.


I got a chuckle out of this one. It was the old Bandits office.
Mad Maggie's is indeed CLOSED.





This building used to be owned by Rep. Keith Farnham. Don't know now.

Quiznos, now closed.

These photos were all taken on Douglas, Grove, Fulton and Spring Streets.

And the mayor calls this a success? Clearly he's missing the point about downtown, the blight and the failure of throwing government money at it.