Seeds of residential growth: Vacant downtown Rockford warehouses could be trendy new living spaces

By Kevin Haas
Rock River Current
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ROCKFORD — A pair of vacant warehouses with ties to some of the city’s early economic heavyweights could get repurposed into a mix of living spaces that pay homage to the buildings’ past.

The former Condon–Shumway Seed Company building, once home to one of the largest seed companies in the world, and the vacant Mack Paper/Bartlett building would be home to a combined 65 apartments under a plan developed by Studio GWA architects and Gorman & Co., which would manage the property.

The shuttered brick buildings with boarded up windows, which sit along a nearly deserted portion of Cedar Street on the southern edge of downtown, would become market-rate lofts, studio, one–bedroom and two–bedroom apartments.

“An area that really didn’t see any investment for 50 years, here’s an opportunity finally to turn that around,” Gary Anderson, principal architect at Studio GWA, told the Rock River Current. “It’s a little bit off the beaten path, but on the other hand there is a lot of uniqueness that we feel is very attractive. … It could be a very exciting space.”

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The design would incorporate the buildings’ industrial features and wide open floor plans. For an idea of what to expect, take a look at the nearby Embassy Suites Rockford Riverfront hotel, 416 S. Main St., which was redeveloped from the historic Amerock factory.

“A lot of what people are seeing at the Embassy Suites — the big windows, the large columns, the concrete floors, the masonry — those are all features that as a hotel guest you can enjoy, but now it will be something that if you’re renting an apartment there that you’ll have as part of your daily home,” said Ashley Sarver, a partner and senior urban planner for Studio GWA.

Taxpayer support

The roughly $18 million project would get financial support from the Illinois Historic Preservation Tax Credit program and City Council members are considering a redevelopment agreement that would expand a nearby tax-increment finance district to provide further assistance to the developers.

As part of the agreement, the Amerock Hotel TIF District would grow to include the two properties. TIF districts capture increases in property taxes that come from higher property values into a special fund that can be used for redevelopment purposes. The city, if it approves the redevelopment deal, would give back 100% of that increased tax revenue to developers. The total amount is estimated at $1.4 million over the life of the TIF, which expires in 2041, according to Karl Franzen, the city’s director of community and economic development.

“We’ve remained bullish on the opportunities for really shifting our market through the demand for residential in downtown,” Franzen said. “But that being said, while there’s strong demand, we still have gaps in these projects.”

The increment could generate about $85,000 in its first year, Franzen said, and the city would also waive a nearly $45,000 lien on the properties from previous demolition work as part of the deal.

“These are some of my favorite buildings in the city of Rockford, so I’m really excited to see them get redeveloped,” Franzen said. “We’re making market-rate opportunities available and with that we’re continuing the momentum that we’re seeing in our downtown.”

City Council members will look at the deal on Monday after it passed out of the Planning and Development Committee this week.

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‘Entrepreneurial kind of spirit’

The Condon–Shumway Seed Co. property, a series of interconnected buildings at 628-642 Cedar Street, was built starting in 1912 for the family-run Condon Brothers company. It merged with the R.H. Shumway Co. in 1933, and the firms sold seeds by mail order for decades. 

The headquarters building was used to mail more than two million catalogs at its peak and process orders for customers. The companies closed in the 1980s and the former headquarters is one of the few surviving buildings from Rockford’s seed industry, according to the National Register of Historic Places. The building was added to that register on Aug. 18, 2015.

“That entrepreneurial kind of spirit is still within the walls, and we want to transfer that to the people who live there,” Anderson said.

The building would be converted to 27 loft apartments with about 6,000 square feet of first floor commercial work or art gallery space. The roof would have a community top deck and the basement could offer space for artist studios and storage. 

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The Mack Paper building at 502 Cedar St., meanwhile, would become 38 apartments with first floor amenities for residents. It would have a mix of studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom units with a community roof deck. A vacant plot on Winnebago Street would be used for parking.

Studio GWA is petitioning for the Mack building to be added to the National Register of Historic Places in conjunction with the Shumway building.

There’s no date set for when ground would break on the project, but the hope is to open it in 2023 or 2024 with City Council support.

‘A good change’

The live and work spaces, along with potential art galleries and commercial space, would activate an area of the city that’s been largely unused, Anderson and Sarver said.

“It’s been kind of an area where you drive through or past,” Sarver said. “It’s just going to create that kind of 24-hour presence in that section of downtown, which I think is going to be a good change.”

It could also create more foot traffic for Rockford Roasting Co., Davis Park and draw more attention to southwest side attractions like Tinker Swiss Cottage Museum and Booker Washington Community Center.

“It also will open up more opportunities, more visibility, we hope, for the assets that we already have on the west side,” Sarver said. “Hopefully this just provides additional foot traffic to some of the existing businesses and institutions and parks and all the good things that we already have there.”

Sarver said the development could help the city address a housing shortage, and eventually help it grow.

“We don’t have to be a city of 150,000. We can be expanding and growing on that,” she said. “And offering cool places to live and creating a different type of energy than we had before: We’re going to be going that direction.”

This article is by Kevin Haas. Email him at khaas@rockrivercurrent.com or follow him on Twitter at @KevinMHaas.