WREX.com – Rockford’s News LeaderCash cows or future development?

Cash cows or future development?

By Bob Schaper

ROCKFORD (WREX) - With this year's budget up in the air Rockford aldermen look for any way they can to raise cash. One idea that's been suggested is selling city-owned buildings.

"If we're not going to do anything with the property we shouldn't be in the business of owning it," says Ald. Jeff Holt, D-11. "So we may see some amendments that show us selling some of those properties."

Holt says he and his colleagues are looking at several properties, including the former Ingersoll building, bought in 2002 for $1.9 million. But the city's finance department says rental income on the building is $340,000 a year, versus $223,000 in upkeep.

And there's another reason not to sell, says the chair of the council's finance committee.

"I'm adamantly against selling any property that the city controls on the river," says Ald. Pat Curran, R-2. "That's what happened in the past. Oh, we've got some property, we sell it to a developer, and you build right up to the river. I think it's totally inappropriate."

Then there's the Barber-Colman campus, purchased in 2002 for $775,000, and the former National Guard armory, bought for $42,000 in back taxes in 2006. Together they cost about $130,000 a year to maintain.

But Mayor Larry Morrissey seems cool to the idea of selling any of them.

"The idea of seeing properties like the Ingersoll building or the armory building go back to the private sector and get redeveloped, I absolutely agree with that," Morrissey says. "But the idea of selling them in a fire sale, I think, is ludicrous."