Editorial

Cairo inventory

Monday, August 6, 2007

Talk about a depressing assignment.

Southern Illinois University architecture professor Bob Swenson will be sending some of his students to Cairo, Ill., with digital cameras. Their charge? To detail the vacant building inventory of the downtrodden town.

Students will also fill out forms, which will become part of an online inventory so interested developers can immediately see what's available.

It's a noteworthy task, and we hope one day it will become useful.

It could be argued that Cairo has nowhere to go but up. It's being compared to New Orleans' Ninth Ward, which was decimated by Hurricane Katrina. But for so long, so many buildings along Commercial Street in Cairo have been empty. And so far no one has seen the value in restoring them.

What will it take for a Cairo turnaround? Too many things to mention here, but a great start would be the fruition of a large industrial project such as the much-discussed coal plant that could bring 1,000 jobs to the area. It's likely that even a break such as that won't by itself lead to a commercial-district revitalization. It'll take leadership and planning to turn rubble into retail.

We hope Cairo begins an economic transformation soon. We hope that a developer will one day not long from now see the value in making a large investment in the historic district and revive it and make large sums of money in the process. An inventory could be useful to make that happen.

Comments

View 3 comments or respond

Community discussion is important, and we encourage you to participate as a reader and commenter. Click here to see our Guidelines. We also encourage registered users to let us know if they see something inappropriate on our site. You can do that by clicking "Report Comment" below. Our goal is to create a place for robust and civil discourse about our community, state and nation.

What Cairo needs first of all is a true commitment to change from its citizens. They have to get the ball rolling by doing what they can to make their town more enticing to future developers. Things like clean up the trash along the streets, stop loitering on the sidewalks & in the streets at all hours of the day & night, etc. Nobody is going to believe Cairo is worth a large investment of both time and money until the CURRENT residents believe it's true and put forth an investment of their own -- financial if at all possible, but at least one of behavior changes.

-- Posted by SEMOfan80 on Mon, Aug 6, 2007, at 5:48 PM
I grew up in Cairo and graduated from Cairo High School. I have watched for the last 45 years the squandering of everything that made Cairo a wonderful town, from its retail businesses, its school system, its local government, its infrastructure, and finally its youth, which should have been its future. It will take a lot more than just a few wanting it to change, for it to become a prosperous, thriving, vital community, again. I can only hope that will happen.Unfortunately, I have my doubts. Susan Haslauer Bryant

-- Posted by shbjjb on Mon, Aug 6, 2007, at 6:32 PM
Several years ago a corporation wanted to open a manufacturing plant in Cairo. The plant, as I recall, needed around 200 people. They received 37 applications in a month. Disgusted, they packed up and left, moving instead to small community in eastern Virginia. Cairo needs, first and foremost, a work ethic. It also needs an end to all government subsistence programs for those physically capable of working to provide the drive to succeed. And, it needs to clean up it's streets. If they cannot do these things, Cairo is a dead town and will soon be a ghost town. I have already heard many refer to it as such.

-- Posted by Little_Mac on Tue, Aug 7, 2007, at 11:09 AM

Respond to this story

Posting a comment requires a subscription.

More to explore