Cairo seeks comprehensive plan; stakeholders start pushing for economic development

CAIRO, Ill. -- The city of Cairo hasn't had a comprehensive plan in 41 years.

"The last time I came across a comprehensive plan for the city of Cairo was back in 1973 … and actually, that plan wasn't implemented," Mayor Tyrone Coleman said Thursday night at a public meeting at Cairo High School.

With help from New Orleans-based consulting firm GCR Inc., concerned residents and city leaders are looking to change that.

About 50 people gathered for the meeting Thursday to look at data the firm has collected and start discussing where the city should go next.

Cairo has been in decline for decades, with U.S. Census data showing its population dropping from a peak of 15,203 in 1920 to 2,831 by 2010.

Coleman, 65, remembers coming home in 1984, after a stint in the Marines and a few years in Los Angeles, to find many familiar businesses closed.

"I just think that you don't have the leadership -- the visionary leadership -- so things reversed itself," Coleman said. "We used to be the hub community service area. People came here to shop, they came here for medical, they came here for entertainment, and now it's the opposite: People go outside for that."

Dwight Norton, project manager for GCR, cited statistics showing residents of Alexander County -- of which Cairo is the county seat -- spend $59 million a year on retail goods, but they take $48 million of that amount outside the county, partly because there simply aren't many places to shop locally.

At the same time, people from outside Cairo hold 815 of the roughly 1,100 jobs in the city, while 671 of Cairo's 2,812 residents live in town and work somewhere else, he said.

Those numbers were among the issues on participants' minds Thursday night as they huddled around large maps of the city, working in small groups to identify buildings and other assets they deemed important.

Cairo resident Syga Robinson participates in a breakout session identifying significant properties in the community during a public meeting Thursday. (Emily Priddy)

The effort to create a comprehensive plan comes at the behest of the Department of Economic and Community Development, Coleman said.

The department has funded the purchase and demolition of many derelict structures in Cairo, but before it hands out anymore money, it wants to see what the city intends to do with the newly vacant land, he said.

"They've expended enough money to us to demolish. Now they want to see what we plan to do with the unused land," Coleman said.

Making the new comprehensive plan more effective than the old one will depend on support by all stakeholders, from residents to government officials, he said.

"We have to affect the infrastructure of the citizenry's mind to the point of making them feel that something can happen that hasn't happened that's progressive," Coleman said. "… It's kind of like tearing down that wall of no hope and just doing small things to build that hope."

Syga Robinson, who just moved from Chicago to Cairo last year after being away for 30 years, said the meeting Thursday was a step in that direction.

"I think the meeting brought a vision to the community," she said. "People sit and talk about things, but nobody has actually done anything about it. This meeting gives us a whole new inspiration that something might be done for Cairo. … 'No vision, the people perish.' That's what the Word says. We don't have a vision here in Cairo. We're going to get one."

One vision Robinson has for Cairo is an increase in opportunities for youths.

"I would like to see recreation for youth, educational -- like an off-site educational math and reading center," she said. "The majority of the people here are between the ages of 21 and 24 or something like that, and there are a lot of them that don't have their GED."

Keeping young people occupied also could help reduce crime, Coleman said.

"When I grew up, there were adults that were involved with the youth on a grand scale," he said. "There were youth clubs out of households or actual buildings that housed youth."

Today, the city has a chess club and one youth foundation, but before this year, young people had nothing to do, Coleman said.

"Without a youth, you don't have a future," he said.

Public safety has been in the spotlight recently as a result of several high-profile homicides, including the murders last month of two bank employees in what federal authorities characterized as a failed robbery attempt.

"Now we're at a point where we're starting to experience those tragedies ourselves, but when you look around the country, that's where the country's at," Coleman said.

For all its challenges, Cairo has plenty of assets, Coleman and Norton said.

One of those assets is inexpensive housing: The median rent in Cairo is $326, and the median home value is $33,900, Norton said.

Lower real estate values create opportunities for businesses, Coleman said.

"Personally, I think the greatest asset we have is our vacant land, because that's what we can build up on," Coleman said. "We're appreciative to those businesses that have endured … but we have so much unused land, it's unimaginable the kinds of businesses that can come here."

Another advantage is history. Of the 1,597 housing units in Cairo, about 40 percent were built before 1939, compared to 12 percent for the rest of the region, Norton said.

The city hasn't taken advantage of its history and natural resources, which draw some tourists but could attract more, Coleman said.

"From my perspective, we haven't made any kind of impact in our tourism," he said. "Just right here in the city of Cairo alone, there's so much history. There's been money expended down this way, but to see the fruition of that? No."

Among the city's tourist attractions are Magnolia Manor and Riverlore, a pair of historic mansions that are open for tours; nearby Fort Defiance State Park; murals along the floodwall; and closed but architecturally striking buildings such as the Gem Theater.

Coleman said the area's topography also attracts tourists.

He said he recently met some British tourists who had come to the area specifically to see the confluence of the rivers.

"We live here, and the average person can't see the … natural beauty of that place," Coleman said.

The city also has ready access to multiple forms of transportation, with two rail lines and U.S. 51 passing through town and the Mississippi and Ohio rivers and Interstate 57 nearby.

Norton suggested Cairo could convert some of its levees and abandoned rail lines to bike trails, as other cities have done.

But exactly what the city does with its resources will depend on what participants want, he said.

"What's important to them? We're trying to understand -- what are the strengths of the town," Norton said. "…The comprehensive plan, it's a road map for kind of the direction the city wants to head."

Many comprehensive plans fail because they either lack strong public support or fail to lay down specific steps toward reaching goals, he said.

Once Cairo establishes its goals, GCR will work with the city to consider "barriers and keys to success" and identify specific steps toward achieving those goals, Norton said.

"It goes back to that familiar cliché or saying: 'People don't plan to fail, but fail to plan,' and that's where we find ourselves," Coleman said. "We're suffering from not only [lacking] plans that's relevant to the present and future, [but] the last plan, from my perspective, was never even implemented, either."

epriddy@semissourian.com

388-3642

Pertinent address:

Cairo, Ill.