City officials disagree on whether to ‘give back’ state grant for Belleville market
The administration of Belleville Mayor Jenny Gain Meyer proposed this week that the city drop plans for a City Market and “decline” a nearly $425,000 grant the state awarded for the project in 2023.
Officials said they couldn’t find a suitable replacement for the original proposed location, a city-owned building next to City Hall, which is no longer considered feasible because of parking problems and high renovation costs.
The vendors market was a key initiative of former Mayor Patty Gregory, but it never came to fruition during her term. The city reexamined the project after Meyer was elected last year.
“We didn’t have another city-owned (building) that we thought would be a fit,” Director of Grants and Special Projects Eric Schauster told alderpersons at their Monday night meeting.
The city asked the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity whether it could use the grant money for an outdoor farmers market in a proposed park at West Main and South Sixth Street, Schauster said. But the state agency deemed that plan too different from the primarily indoor concept outlined in the application.
The response from the Belleville City Council to the idea of declining the grant was essentially “not so fast.”
“I think it is very short-sighted if we give this back,” said Ward 8 Alderwoman Kara Osthoff, who made an impassioned statement and kicked off an unusual extended discussion at the meeting.
Schauster pointed out that Belleville wouldn’t technically be “giving back” the money, which the state has allocated but not paid. It’s a matching grant that would require the city to spend $439,265 to receive $424,850 for a total of $864,115 for the project.
Gregory introduced the City Market idea partly as a way to provide a stable location for Belleville’s struggling Old Town Market, a seasonal outdoor farmers market that is now defunct.
Farmers decried the lack of space for parking or unloading trucks at the City Hall site, but officials moved forward with the grant application. Gregory envisioned an indoor-outdoor facility for year-round operation, vendor space for art and other items, a commercial kitchen for cooking demonstrations and a venue for special events.
‘Sitting on our hands’
At Monday night’s meeting, Osthoff questioned the city’s years of inaction on the market. She said a neighboring community that received a grant through the same program has constructed a building, opened a venue and hosted events “while we’ve been sitting on our hands.”
Ward 2 Alderwoman Gigi Dowling Urban suggested that officials “reimagine” the project, perhaps establishing an outdoor farmers market with an indoor component that consists of a small building for an office and bathrooms. She asked whether the city-owned former Lindenwood University campus was a possibility.
“I’m not so sure we have to make that decision (to decline the grant) today,” Urban said, noting that the city had until the end of the year to use the money under a state-approved extension.
Ward 1 Alderwoman Lillian Schneider asked why the city couldn’t use one of the buildings it has acquired through St. Clair County tax sales for a market. Meyer responded that those buildings generally are dilapidated and acquired for the purpose of demolition.
“We were unable to come up with an actual building (for the market), short of constructing one,” Meyer said, adding that $800,000 wouldn’t cover construction, let alone maintenance and staffing.
Alderpersons voted 14-1 to table the grant issue and send it back to the City Council’s Economic Development and Annexation Committee and the city’s Economic Development, Planning and Zoning Department. Ward 3 Alderman Scott Ferguson was absent.
Ward 3 Alderman Kent Randle voted no on the motion to table. He wanted to decline the grant. He said Tuesday the City Market plan had grown too far beyond its intended purpose, and it was looking like the city’s costs would outweigh benefits.
“I don’t believe the city should be in the business of competing against private enterprise,” he said.
Year-round concept
Gregory went public with her City Market idea in spring 2022. She asked local architect Gary Karasek to do a sketch that showed the brick building at 117 S. Illinois St., next to City Hall, with a market sign, landscaping and people gathered in front.
Since that time, the city has released no detailed plans, blueprints or artist renderings, and no renovations have taken place.
Meyer defeated Gregory in the April 2025 election. In January, officials acknowledged that the Illinois Street building was no longer under consideration for a market.
“After more investigative work by engineers looking at the building, we determined that it’s not going to be feasible at (the Illinois Street) site,” Schauster said at the time.
Specifically, officials concluded that plumbing and other costs related to installation of a commercial kitchen were going to be too high, and there was no place for handicap parking.
The city spent $90,000 on the design study, Schauster told alderpersons at the meeting Monday night.
Randle said he would have been fine with setting aside space in a city park for a seasonal outdoor farmers market that wasn’t going to take business away from local shops.
Randle argued that it would be less damaging to Belleville to decline the grant now and give the state time to possibly allocate the money for another project in another community.
“If we wait until the end of the year, and then we say, ‘We can’t do this,’ those funds disappear,” he said. “That’s my understanding.”
COVID-relief funds
Old Town Market was managed by different organizations in different Belleville locations over the years before largely disbanding around the time Gregory announced her City Market idea.
A few farm stands later set up in the parking lot of LongStory Coffee, but that’s no longer happening.
The state awarded Belleville the $424,850 grant in April 2023 as part of a $22.5 million package to boost Illinois tourism, although it took months to complete the process, according to Schauster. The money came from the federal government in the form of COVID-19 relief funds.
In January 2024, the City Council voted 13-1 to accept the grant and match it to cover renovation costs. Randle spoke against the project.
“I’m not convinced this is such a good deal,” he said after casting the sole dissenting vote. “Something tells me that this thing might very well end up being a money pit.”
Other critics said the market plan was flawed because of limited parking at the City Hall location, high renovation costs, lack of space for farm trucks and a potential conflict with a proposed development down the street, although that development later was halted.
Gregory said St. Clair County officials had agreed to allow the city to use the courthouse garage for customer parking, and that “naysayers” wouldn’t discourage her because people also had predicted failure for Art on the Square, which she co-founded, and they were wrong.
Schauster told alderpersons Monday night that projected renovation costs for the building next to City Hall had risen to more than $1 million, and that didn’t include annual costs for maintenance and staffing. The building now is being used for storage. Even if customers could park in the courthouse garage, he said, handicap parking would still be a problem.
