Mayor Williams Says Progress on SONIC is on Schedule; Next Bresee Tower Move is Agrmt with County

ABOVE: Mayor Williams says the next step in the demolition of Bresee Tower will be a new intergovernmental agreement with Vermilion County, so as to include the old Court Annex Building in the demolition plans.

In Danville; let’s look at updates on something coming down, something going up, and something getting gutted on the inside.

The item coming down, now certainly for sure, is Bresee Tower.  The city order for demolition had been legally granted after owner Chris Collins had failed to show up in court on July 18th.  However, Collins had until August 18th to appeal.  No action was taken.

Mayor Rickey Williams, Jr says now it’s time to go back to the county, and obtain a new intergovernmental agreement, since the original idea had been to tear down Bresee Towner and and adjacent Vermilion County Court Annex building at the same time.

AUDIO: Then we will put that out for bid.  The bid process will probably be 45 to 60 days.  And then once we’ve received bids, we will take them to Council to be awarded.  I don’t expect that demolition would start before the beginning of next year.

The northwest corner of Vermilion and Fairchild, where a new SONIC drive-in and Jimmy John’s are planned.

In the “something going up” category, Mayor Williams says; don’t worry, the plans for the new SONIC and Jimmy John’s northwest of Vermilion and Fairchild are going just fine.  Even if ground hasn’t been broken, there’s work being done.

AUDIO: The reason why it hasn’t broken ground is they’re working with IDOT on ingress and regress on to Route 1.  So once they have that worked out, then they’ll put together the final plans for them to be approved.  As we said last year, this is a project where we don’t expect it to be open until next fall.

Three new eating establishments are planned inside the old Downtown Danville Turk Furniture building.

Finally, the plans for three new eating establishments inside the old Turk Furniture building are progressing as well.  Mayor Williams says the planned bakery is right now leading the way.

AUDIO: We received stamp plans for the bakery, those were approved I believe last week or the week before.  So hopefully, we’ll see some movement soon.

BBQ and Italian establishments are scheduled for inside the old Turk building as well.