THE FOLLOWING IS A NEWS-GAZETTE STORY BY JENNIFER BAILEY
DANVILLE — Last month, Danville Mayor Rickey Williams Jr. said local officials have been working with U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth to include $1
million for the city in an appropriations bill for help with the former Quaker Oats site for potential redevelopment.
Vermilion Advantage President and CEO Mike Marron on Friday shared an update before the Step Up community group about continuing to respond to the Quaker Oats situation.
“Basically, what we’re doing is putting a plan in place to try to ether market that property as is, which looks less and less likely all the time given the news in the last week; or to put a plan in place to revamp that property and basically redevelop it,” Marron said.
Findings made public recently by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration showed salmonella contamination possibly extending for years at the former
Quaker Oats plant in Danville.
Marron said there’s been interest in the building, but the salmonella issue is “going to be a major problem. So, we are in contact with PepsiCo trying to figure out exactly the status of that building and whether or not it’s salvageable.”
If the building isn’t reusable, local officials are putting pressure on PepsiCo to “do what’s right by the community.”
Marron said it’s going to be a long-term process to try to attract something big for redevelopment of the site, but federal funding news could come this fall.
“Some good news that’s happened on that front, we applied for some congressionally-directed spending through Sen. Tammy Duckworth’s office,” he said.
The city made the first cut for a $1 million appropriation to do flood remediation along East Voorhees Street, which would affect the Quaker Oats property and adjacent Heatcraft property and other areas, Marron reported.
“That issue would have to be handled before that property would be able to be redeveloped,” he said.
The next funding step hopefully would include Danville in the next appropriations bill that will be in front of the appropriations committee in the budget process in Washington, D.C. in September, Marron added.
“Hopefully we get included in the federal budget. That would be a huge first step to getting that property redeveloped and prepped for being able to be marketed to another major employer that we could bring into the community,” Marron said.
Danville Community Development Administrator Logan Cronk has said while the building’s fate remains up to PepsiCo, the city’s main concern is water mitigation on the Quaker property and those contiguous to it.
“During every major rain event the city of Danville has on East Voorhees Street, there’s a large accumulation of water. That water can be seen on
the current Quaker site, the Heatcraft site, and the Dawson Logistics site. The city has to be prepared for how to get that property redeveloped. And that could include the city-owned prior Heatcraft site with the Quaker site. What does that look like? And how do we get it out of the floodplain? So that’s what the city of Danville is investigating right now.”
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