Forest City Gear celebrates growth, cuts ribbon on expansion of Roscoe campus

By Kevin Haas
Rock River Current
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ROSCOE — Forest City Gear, a precision manufacturer of gears used everywhere from here to Mars, cut the ribbon on Tuesday on a new climate-controlled warehouse that expands its Roscoe campus.

The 5,000-square-foot warehouse was built over the past nine months just south of its main factory at 11715 Main St. It will provide dedicated space for finished parts, freeing room in the two pre-existing buildings that was needed to keep pace with a growing number of orders.

“You might think it’s just a warehouse building … but this building represents growth for our business and for our employees,” said Kika Young, president of Forest City Gear. “I would love to brag about all the aerospace, outer space and defense customers that we’re housing in there, unfortunately they all have really rigid (non-disclosure agreements), so I can’t.”

Forest City Gear was founded by Stetler and Evelyn Young in Rockford in 1955, when its first gears were used in home ice cream makers and in mechanisms that lower gymnasium basketball hoops.

The company is still family owned seven decades later, and it now employs about 120 people. Young, along with her sisters Appy Mikel and Mindy Young, are the third generation of the family owning the business.

It’s been at its Roscoe home since 1967, and today it produces fine- and medium-pitch custom gears for everything from aircraft to tractors, prothetic limbs and exam tables. It’s perhaps best known for making high-precision gears for NASA’s outer space-bound systems, including multiple Mars rovers: Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity and Perseverance.

“We’re excited about the growth the company has seen and continuing to keep that growth in the village of Roscoe and the stateline area,” said Jared Lyford, director of operations for Forest City Gear.

The design work was handled by Arc Design Resources of Machesney Park and the building was provided by Morton Buildings of Rochelle. Lyford also thanked Complete Mechanical Solutions of Machesney Park for the HVAC work, Bel Rock Asphalt Paving of Belvidere, Quad Electrical Services of Roscoe and Nelson Landscaping of Rockford for their contributions to the project.

Forest City Gear said the new warehouse represents a significant step in its strategy to improve operational efficiency and offer timed delivery for customers.

“We have several new orders — some from new customers, some from existing customers — that required a lot more square footage in our existing factory building,” Kika Young said. “Thankfully we have the luxury of having a several acre campus here in Roscoe, so we did have the space to create a finished goods warehouse.”

Young said that her parents, the late Fred and Wendy Young, instilled a sense of environmental responsibility in her and her sisters. It weighed on her that several small and medium trees had to be taken down to make room for the expansion. So, she worked with Country Road Greenhouses of Rochelle to provide a small tree to be taken home and planted by all Forest City Gear employees who wanted to do so.

“We believe it’s really, really important to be good stewards of our environment,” she said. “Hopefully as a group we can more than make up with these new trees for what we had to take down.”

This article is by Kevin Haas. Email him at khaas@rockrivercurrent.com or follow him on X at @KevinMHaas or Instagram @thekevinhaas and Threads @thekevinhaas