(inspirational music) - Transforming East Peoria.

We've seen the Levee District grow into a major shopping destination and soon there will be a brand new apartment building but the City of East Peoria is not stopping there.

Mayor John Kahl joins us now.

Thanks for coming in, Mayor.

- Hey, thanks for having us.

- A few weeks ago we talked to Ty Livingston, your Director of Planning and Community Development.

He grew up in Peoria.

He's witnessed the changes in East Peoria his whole life.

You grew up in East Peoria.

- Yes, sir.

- Could you ever imagine the city would look like what it looks like now?

- No, not whatsoever.

When we were kicking off this branding initiative and sitting down with Northstar, one of the questions asked of me knowing that I grew up in East Peoria, if I had one word to use, what would it be?

And I said transformative.

When I grew up there, it was a Caterpillar town.

It's where my dad started his career and just look at what it is today.

It's just absolutely unbelievable, it's totally transformed.

- It seems like constantly there's new information coming out and new plans coming out to improve the city.

We'll talk about the Levee District a little bit but I want to talk about your State of the City Address.

A few weeks removed from that, it sounds like there's a lot of exciting things going on.

- Yeah, it's gonna be a big year in East Peoria.

One of the things, I'll just back up just five years, the majority of the Council had flipped when I came on board as Mayor and one of the things that we did together as a new Council was implement a five-year capital plan and what that allowed us to do and we've seen it play out over these last five years is tackle these longstanding projects, what I deemed capital projects that are really important.

For going back 10 years, there seemed to be, from a public perspective, all the emphasis was on the Levee District and a lot of folks, residents felt like they were being ignored, streets were being ignored, a lot of capital needs that weren't being met.

So we really made that a priority to roll up our sleeves and start tackling these projects one project at a time.

But to me, I viewed it as a commitment and we're all on a single page and what I present at the State of the City are some very, very large capital projects that are long overdue.

- You got plans for $28.5 million in capital improvements coming up.

- Yeah.

- Let's talk about, you mentioned streets, the Levee District is useless if you can't get there.

- That's correct.

- [Mark] Springfield Road, that's a big project.

Tell us what's going on there.

- That is a very big project and actually I think in the presentation, I talked about it being 6.8 million on my slide.

However, there was a water and sewer component to that that was going out bid separate from that.

So where it stands today is we got the bids back and it came in higher than what we anticipated but the Council still is committed to fulfilling that obligation as we see it with Springfield Road.

But that will go from Main Street all the way out to corporate limits towards Groveland, other side of Muller Road and that's a full mill and overlay, curbing.

We'll replace water on Main up and down Springfield Road until I want to say it's like Woodlawn Boulevard and then from there, we have some newer stuff already in there.

But part of the idea here is to do almost a full reconstruction but it's what people don't understand is the stuff that you don't see that has to be included in that.

It doesn't make a lot of sense to actually invest this kind of money redoing the roadway when you have aging infrastructure over it Just to go and tear it up in two years and fix that.

So all in, this is gonna be about 11, $11.5 million once the water and sewer bids come back in.

- Is that gonna be done by the time we have the Festival of Lights?

- Yeah, so.

- And people are stuck on Springfield Road?

- It is a very aggressive schedule.

Otto Baum is gonna be the primary contractor on that job with the, you'll see a lot of the curbing stuff kicking off yet here shortly in the summer.

They've already bid on that project and we've worked with them to kinda confine the scope of it to get it within the budget.

But it's a very aggressive timeline but it should be done.

The roadway itself should be done before the Festival.

- Okay, and then we have Camp and Riverside intersection, $1.5 million worth of improvements.

That's a busy intersection too.

- That's busy and it is in sad shape.

So that was part of, back in the day, it was a PUATS and now it's Tri-County Regional Planning Commission.

That was what I call still a PUATS project, if you will.

We had allocated funds a number of years ago in our commitment to that project and of course, the way those projects work is their funding that was approved on the Tri-County end of it remains the same and as you know, costs have gone up but we've remained committed.

That entire intersection will be redone and it's in a sad shape.

So we were hoping to get that accomplished last year.

That will definitely be an improvement made this year, this fall.

- I want to jump to Pinecrest Drive, improvements there.

It says phase three, what's that about?

- Yeah, so with Pinecrest is what we did last year is anyone that's driven Pinecrest knows that when Pinecrest was done, I can't tell you how many years ago that roadway was put in tying it into the Interstate but it was always bumpy.

The concrete work on there, I don't know, not being disparaging but it was never done in my eyes properly, so it was very bumpy.

So we went through and we broke it into three phases and we did phase one and two from the Interstate up to the 474 overpass and we went in and cut out all the bad areas and redid those in concrete.

This last section will be from the 474 overpass to Muller Road and we're hoping to get that project completed this year but that'll be phase three and then we've tackled that.

- Okay.

Cole Street signals, what's going on there?

Just brand new signals there?

- Yeah, so Cole Street, those signals that are at the intersection of East Washington and Cole Street were temporary back in the day and IDOT pretty much came to the city, this has been a number of years ago and said "If you want to keep those there, they have to be permanent."

And for whatever reason, it kinda fell off but we brought it back this year.

It's something that needs to be done.

There's enough traffic there to warrant making that a permanent signalized intersection.

So that's on the docket for this year.

- Let's talk about the Police Department and to say that the police have outgrown that building was probably an understatement.

- It was an understatement.

So the current building I believe was opened in 1987 and as it stands now, that building actually houses Central Fire Station as well as the Police Department.

On the police side of things, two years ago now, we did a space study and we hired a consultant, FGM Architects to come down.

That's their wheelhouse and they did a space study and quickly identified what we had was 6,500 square feet and our needs in today's world came out closer to like 32,000 square feet.

So a big jump.

- Wow.

- So what we did is over the course of this past year, we had a committee put together and we went up and toured some of the police stations, both new and those that they've transformed just to get some ideas and get a ballpark picture of what our needs, how we would meet those based on what others have done and we came back with some excellent ideas and now we've increased that space to just under 41,000 square feet because part of that will be a garage that will house 20 vehicles.

But it's exciting, it's gonna be a big project.

That will be located just on West Camp at West Camp and Clocktower.

Very visible.

- Yeah.

- It'll be a two-story building by design.

We take a lot of pride in having a safe community and I think that will send the message that we'll continue to be a safe community.

- And just in time because you say you're fully staffed now for the first time since 2019.

- Yes.

- That's gotta feel good at a time where police departments are facing staffing shortages.

- Yes, so we've done a few things to position the city where we could get back to full staff.

There were a couple years there where everybody was swiping officers from other departments, kinda one-upping each other because it was so short-staffed everywhere in the police service.

But we've kind of taken some measures in East Peoria to do a good job of recruiting through lateral moves as well as new hires and we had just gotten the full staff in, I want to say it was February of 2019, sent four off to the Academy and then the pandemic hit.

The State Police shut down the Academy and so unfortunately we fell behind once again at that time.

But our guys have also moved to 12-hour shifts.

- Yeah, have you gotten feedback on that?

- Nothing but positive.

The morale is absolutely incredible and I just want the public to know, there seems to be this misconception.

I know I saw the coverage on it talking to some offers there that were excited about spending more time with their family but in reality, they're working an additional four hours during a 14-day work period.

It's just moving to 12-hour shifts allows them to have that additional time off.

So let's say you're a new officer, you could spend 15 years on that department before getting weekends off with your family whereas you go to these schedules and it rotates and it balances it out and I think that was a very intriguing thing for others that were sitting back to see if we would actually go that route, which we did and I'm telling you, the officers seem to really, really like it and I think the public, from a public perspective, they need to understand going from three shifts to essentially two, you see there's a larger presence on the streets.

So you're actually seeing a lot more officers visibly out there now than you did prior to.

- Well, you may have some surrounding communities look at that too, since there's such a need for officers here.

But anything new with the Fire Department and in that area?

- Yeah, actually with fire service, it's interesting.

This has never happened before.

On the police side of it, some of the things the state I would say has had a large impact on shortages on the police side of things but with the fire service, there was never a shortage of people getting into that career and for some reason, I don't know if it was related to the pandemic, there has been a shortage and everybody's feeling that effect, especially the volunteer departments.

That's getting much harder for them.

But with us, what we had in our plans this year between retirements and open positions, we were looking to hire 10 to 12 firefighters this year and we just swore in six of 'em and they're currently in the Academy in Peoria.

So that's gonna put us back at full staff and then with the pending retirements, we'll look to hire four to six more throughout the year.

But the new Fire Station just went live on Friday.

So for anyone that's not checked that out, that is absolutely a beautiful station.

- [Mark] And where's that at for folks?

- That's up at ICC, right on ICC grounds and just to put that in perspective, Bruce Budde at ICC always corrects me, I say that was 30 years in the making.

He's like "All due respect, John, that's been 40 years."

So ICC and the city had agreed to build a fire station there nearly four decades ago and we took that project on five years ago and made it happen and it's exciting.

It's a beautiful station and the calls for service in that area, that represented probably close to 70%.

- Really?

- Of the calls and it's a very, very busy department.

- Well yeah, and that's gotta cut down on response times too.

- Oh, absolutely, yeah.

- Very good.

Let's transition now into, because you talked about everything at the State of the City, you talked about the school district, District 86 and how they're doing.

What did you take away from all the information you got about District 86?

- So here's what I like to do.

I like to embrace the entire community and I feel like as the Mayor, having grown up in East Peoria, I certainly am a little biased in my opinion.

I love our community, everything about it from the people to our former government to our schools and it's what I like to do in the State of the City is incorporate the schools and the library and the Park District because they're all pillars of our community and oftentimes, having raised four kids and our kids have all gone through the public education system in East Peoria, I don't think we've done a good enough job talking about how good our schools are.

So that's why I include them in the State of the City and I want to be a cheerleader for 'em because as I've discussed before coming on the show, I'm a product of our schools there as well.

So it's a big deal to me.

But they have a lot of great things going on.

I typically ask for five or six highlights that they would like me to touch on, all positive.

I want them to tell their story about all the positives.

In today's world, we tend to focus, especially with social media on all negative things.

I'd rather spin it the other way around because there's a lot more positive things going on in today's world than negative.

We just tend to overlook 'em.

- I hear you, well you did talk about academic growth.

Increased the percentage of students at or above grade level by 18% in math and 16% in reading.

- Yeah, which is a big thing.

I think with our schools in East Peoria, a lot of people don't realize what the poverty level is and in our schools over there, it's about 50%, which makes it challenging.

That's probably why I was so vocal about keeping our kids in school during the pandemic and I know everyone had differences of opinion but my biggest concern were for the kids that were gonna fall further behind.

My wife and I, we're the type of parents where we're extremely involved in our kids' education.

We knew we were gonna hold our kids accountable as they were going through the remote process but there's a lot of kids that don't have that kind of home life and I had a lot of concerns about that.

So that number, that's a big number, so yeah.

- And speaking of students, whether they're extremely successful in school or they struggle, after they get out of school, what is the city doing to keep them from moving elsewhere?

- I tell you what, that's a good point and I think from a region, I look at it regionally, I know there's an initiative that started on the Peoria side of the river that I was involved in early on and it's basically trying to figure out a way to retain our talent that we have to include kids.

What we've seen is a trend where the kids go off to college somewhere and typically don't return and we have needs here.

We have a great workforce here in this region in the Greater Peoria region and I think it's really important to focus on trying to convince these folks, hey, when you get your degree, come back to work here.

We already know it's a great place to live and it's a great place to work and whatnot.

So from our perspective, even on the fire side, we talked about the Fire Department, we had a program in place where they were teaching these high school students, we had a program where they could come in and learn a lot of things on just the EMT side of things as well and that was an ICC endeavor that we worked in collaboration with ICC in hopes of attracting young folks into the fire service and we've actually hired some folks that have gone through that.

So little things like that could go a long way.

- Sure, and we will get back to the Levee District and Blutowne, the development that's coming there.

Tell us where we stand on that and tell us about the kind of people that you're hoping to attract to that area.

- Yeah, well obviously just with any residential complex like that, they did a study five years ago when we sent out an RFP on what we deemed to be mixed use development.

We were hoping to bring residential components into the Levee District for a multitude of reasons.

But that was part of Visionary Leadership, that was part of the original downtown plan that kinda changed and we had to pivot at that time.

But now we've really put an emphasis on bringing residential down there.

When I look at that, I think what they came back with is there's a need and I know Peoria is looking at doing some more projects, residential projects on this side of the river and we're not gonna take away from that.

That's actually gonna compliment what they're hoping to do here.

There's a need with the young professionals.

Look, the Cancer Institute starting to treat patients, that thing is a big deal.

I can't stress enough the importance of what that's gonna do for the Greater Peoria region.

But you look at all the talent that's gonna come in to work there and not just there but we have a lot of great things going on in our workforce where I think we could attract young professionals and I look at that, not to mention retirees, it's gonna be a great place to live.

When you look at the, I deem 'em to be five star amenities, we've not seen anything like that in our area.

So I think what they'll have to offer there is gonna be very intriguing for a lot of folks.

- Before we let you go, we've talked about all the big plans and all the great things going on in East Peoria.

Are there any challenges coming up on the horizon or challenges that the city faces every day?

- Yeah, well I'm kind of a critic of our state government with the unfunded mandates and I have a lot of concerns, not trying to get political but unfunded mandates have a huge impact on the local government and I think people don't understand at times what exactly that looks like.

But from my perspective, we've done a good job of our unfunded pension liabilities, we've tackled that.

We implemented things five, six years ago now that have put us on a good trajectory and we'd like to maintain that.

But depending on what the state's gonna throw at us next, you may have to pivot again.

- Well, it's all about pivoting and East Peoria has certainly done that.

- Yeah.

- Over the years.

So Mayor, we're excited about everything that's going on there and it'll be fun to watch all this come to fruition.

- Yeah, it's gonna be a busy year.

- All right, appreciate your time.

- All right, thank you.

Appreciate you.

- Thank you.

Well, our Phil Luciano talked with the owners of a restaurant in East Peoria's Levee District and found out why they decided to do business in the city.

- [Phil] Customers flock to the Eggcellent Cafe for the food and also for the upbeat vibe of East Peoria's trendy Levee District.

- The customers here, I just think they enjoy shopping in the Levee and doing activities in the Levee and spending the money and giving back to these more smaller businesses.

- [Phil] That's what husband and wife owners Tim and Bessa Halili were hoping for when they opened the place three years ago.

The couple had been running a cafe in the Eastern Illinois town of Sullivan when they decided to find the best place in the state to raise their three children.

While researching, they were impressed by the schools in Washington and wowed by the economic upsurge in East Peoria.

- They loved the community.

They loved what the Levee was building in East Peoria and they wanted to be a part of it.

- [Phil] From day one, Bar has been the manager at Eggcellent Cafe, which serves food mornings and afternoons daily.

At any time, you can get breakfast.

- We have a really good avocado toast.

We sell tons of mimosas, we have a freshly squeezed, it's over there but a fresh squeezed orange juice machine.

A lot of people like to come in and even just watch the oranges go through it.

Like on the border omelets and complex skillets and we have good Benedicts, pancakes.

There's really something for everybody.

- [Phil] Lunch items are available all the time as well.

Many third shift workers arrive at daybreak for dinner.

- They're coming in for a burger.

They're coming in for, we have an ay caramba burger, a fried pickle burger.

They're coming in, maybe a screwdriver.

They're coming in in big parties talking about the night and just having a meal together before they go home and go to bed.

- [Phil] Many customers spot the place while shopping in the Levee District.

There, the cafe has become part of an energetic, fun-loving vibe.

- They want to be a part of the action, a part of the experience and kinda see what they're doing and say "Oh, I go to the Eggcellent Cafe."

- [Phil] Bar believes customers especially like to support locally-owned businesses like Eggcellent Cafe.

- Just a ton of the Pickers, Picker's Daughter it is over there.

Just tons of like little cool shops and fun things to do and I think that's kinda why it's continued to develop the way it has and people want to give back locally.

- [Phil] Put all that enthusiasm together in one shopping area and you get the kind of upbeat atmosphere typical at Eggcellent Cafe.

The eatery has become a growing gathering spot for new and familiar faces.

- Community, they're here to visit, they're here to talk.

They're here to, I don't know, just feel a sense of togetherness.

I just think that in some places, that's lacking and I think to come here and be able to sit down with their friends and have good service and be able to talk and laugh, it's a good thing.

- Back with our friend, Phil Luciano.

The place is happening.

- You hear from people from way back when and they talk about how Peoria Downtown used to be a place to go to shop.

It was like a destination and it was a fun day and the family would come.

It's kinda like that at the Levee District from what these folks are saying.

That they come, they hang out, they eat, they do more shopping.

It's great for the economy.

- Yeah, and during the summer months and when the weather's nice, they have a lot of outdoor events for the family.

So they're doing a good job of drawing people in there.

That's for sure.

- It keeps getting bigger and bigger.

More places to live, more places to shop.

I guess that's how it's supposed to work.

- Yep.

Tell us a little bit about "You Gotta See This!"

coming up in just minute.

- Man, we got some good segments on this show.

First, we're gonna go back 50-plus years to the St. Cecilia kidnapping.

It's one of the most frightening moments in Peoria history back when violence at schools just never happened and we have an interview with the schoolboy who was the center of this kidnapping.

First time he's talked about it since back then.

So that's pretty interesting.

- Yeah.

- And then you're there with a really big tall guy on the show.

- Yeah, my muffler man story.

I think it was the first ever, you gotta see the story I did.

Those big cool fiberglass statues you see around Central Illinois, we'll tell you the story behind those.

Show you where there are some that you may not have thought about before and I need to do an update on the story because I think one of the muffler men we talk about is getting a girlfriend.

- Ooh.

- But I gotta leave it at that.

- Matchmaking.

- I cannot spill the beans any further on that.

- And speaking of big, also in this episode of "You Gotta See This!," we go up to little Hollowayville where they have a huge eating challenge.

Tony's Butt Shack.

Just check out what these guys try to eat.

It's crazy, absolutely crazy.

- Let me just get back to the name there, Tony's Butt Shack.

- Yes.

- Okay.

- It's all about barbecue.

Don't let your mind go astray.

- See, I was gonna guess rump roast.

- Well, I think that might be in there.

I don't know, I don't know all the cuts of meat.

(Mark and Phil laughing) - Great stuff and we're always looking for ideas for "You Gotta See This!"

If you have any, go to our Facebook page, that is WTVP and send us a direct message or leave a comment.

We like to post our stories there.

So in case you miss them every Thursday night, you can go back there to see 'em and check 'em out and of course, you can also go to wtvp.org.

- We're always there.

- We're always on.

Always on, we've got five channels, Phil.

- I know.

- How are only on one of 'em?

- Why are we not getting overtime if we're always on?

Hey, wait a minute.

(Mark laughs) - All right, well thank you very much for joining us.

We appreciate it, "You Gotta See This!"

with Phil and Julie coming up in just a few minutes.

Again, check us out online at wtvp.org, on Facebook and on Instagram.

Have a good night.

(inspirational music)