Starting to revitalize: Cairo leaders look ahead with hope

CAIRO, Ill. -- On a sunny July afternoon, artist Willie Woods sat in front of a huge, once-stately house built in 1860, rebuilding one of the wooden columns that more or less supported the front porch.

The concrete figure of a woman lay in a side yard -- struck down by vandals, Woods said. Next to her stood a similar, unfinished sculpture.

Woods pointed out the burned-out shell of a small house half a block away. Arsonists torched it a few years ago, he said.

"During the same time, they tried to burn this one. It just didn't catch," he said.

Across town, pigeons jockeyed for position atop an abandoned commercial building, while a tree grew through the wall of a long-closed movie theater.

Cairo Mayor Tyrone Coleman stands along the mural on the Ohio River flood wall Thursday. (Laura Simon)

Like Woods' front porch, Cairo -- population 2,812 -- has seen better days.

During an interview Thursday at Cairo City Hall, Mayor Tyrone Coleman outlined reasons to hope it will see them again.

Hopeful signs

The city has used state grant money to demolish about 200 derelict buildings in the past four years, Coleman said.

He said Larry Klein, general manager of the Cairo Public Utility Co., helped the city secure the funds.

"We were in a place where we couldn't apply for grants because the city was behind in audits and all that," Coleman said.

Klein's company stepped in to administer the grant, forming a committee with representatives from the city and the utility, Coleman said.

As part of the grant requirements, Cairo has retained New Orleans-based consulting firm GCR Inc. to help it develop a comprehensive plan -- something Coleman said it hasn't had in at least 40 years.

A June town hall meeting to discuss the plan drew a crowd.

"There was probably close to 100 people there, and they were pleased with their involvement that night, and they went out and talked it up to the community," Coleman said.

Another public meeting is set for Aug. 21.

"We're trying to attract businesses," Klein said in a telephone interview Friday.

The city already has had a few nibbles.

Cairo recently entered into a lease agreement with a Sikeston, Missouri-based company called Area 51 Growers, which wants to become one of 22 state-approved growing sites for medical marijuana, Coleman said.

"We'll receive 5 percent of the gross annually, and then another 5 percent will go into an established 501(c)3 fund to be utilized within the community to assist the schools (and) other organizations within the community to just better the community," he said.

A Chinese company also has made a verbal agreement with the city to set up a fishery for Asian carp, Coleman said.

A few retail businesses also have inquired about the possibility of opening stores in town, he said.

Pros

Cairo has many of the same advantages as Cape Girardeau, especially in terms of transportation, Klein said.

"Geographically, we're the most ideal spot in the entire country, I think," he said, with two rivers, a railroad and an interstate available to move goods.

In addition, land prices in Cairo are lower, Klein said.

"The city of Cape got their name out there, publicized a whole lot better than we did," he said. "... You've got to throw your name in the hat sometime. You'll never get drawn if your name's not out there."

Cons

About a third of Cairo's residents are employed, Coleman said. Another third live on fixed incomes, and the rest are youths.

"You have more unemployed people than you do employed people," he said.

Jobs exist -- the school district, oilseed processing company Bunge and River Bend Rice are all major employers -- but according to data compiled by GCR, only 279 people live and work in Cairo. Another 671 travel to jobs outside the community, while 815 people come into Cairo to work.

"From the time that I can remember, you had more people coming to Cairo to work than actual Cairoites that worked here, but at the same time, when I grew up, if you wanted a job, there was a job available," Coleman said.

That isn't necessarily the case now.

Compounding the problem is the lack of work available to people who have made mistakes in the past, Coleman said.

"We have a niche of people that can't become employed because they have felonies, and they may have only committed that one particular crime, and it may have been 30 years ago, but it's kept them from being employed," he said.

More recent crimes are another challenge.

"It's pretty bad," Cairo Police Chief J.P. Bosecker said of the city's crime rate. "It's not the worst in the world, but for the population, it definitely has more than we can handle at times, or want to handle."

Specific crime data weren't immediately available, but the city has seen its share of high-profile crimes, including the Nov. 1 shooting death of a local restaurant owner; a June 8 homicide at a Cairo nightclub; and a failed bank robbery May 15 that left two employees dead and a third in critical condition with knife wounds.

Bosecker just rejoined the city's police force last week. He was Cairo's police chief once before, in 2005 and 2006, he said.

In between, Bosecker has worked for other departments and served as a soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan -- experiences he said he hopes to use to get crime under control in Cairo.

"In Iraq, you go out, and you try to ... get the trust to where people rely on us and give us information ... because the biggest thing is nobody knows anything, nobody's seen anything, because they're afraid," he said.

Skepticism

Community support is essential if Cairo is to shake off its past and begin recovering from the steady decline that has seen its population drop by more than 80 percent since the 1920s, Coleman said.

"There's two infrastructures you have to deal with: The physical infrastructure of a community as well as the mental infrastructure of how we think, and ... for so long, a spirit of hopelessness has fallen over this community," he said.

Woods said he came to Cairo in 1974. He hasn't seen the city accomplish much since then, and he is skeptical about whether the comprehensive plan will change that.

"They don't want too much of nothing in Cairo," he said. "They pretend they're going to do something. They get the money and then do something else."

Janet Rose saw similar skepticism in her sixth-graders at Cairo Junior/Senior High School.

"The kids complained that they have nothing to do in town, and they don't want to be in town," she said in a telephone interview Friday.

Cairo was going to change, adults promised. Things would get better. Good times were coming.

"They never see anything come to life," Rose said. "...To turn the mood positive, I started telling them about the history of the town, and they started listening, and they got interested in the history of the U.S.S. Cairo."

Rose suggested the students paint a mural of the Civil War gunboat somewhere in town.

They sold T-shirts to raise money for the project, and in the summer of 2011 -- with the help of a professional artist -- the students completed the mural on a building at 34th and Sycamore streets.

A $500 donation from the Cairo High School Class of 1957 paid for the services of another artist, and a new mural began to take shape on the Ohio River floodwall.

The students seem to be taking care of their work, Rose said.

"Nothing has been graffitied yet. ... I'm proud of that," she said. "I think it's because the kids have a part in it, and that just means everything."

Standing in front of the floodwall Thursday morning, Coleman looked at the students' work.

"This place hasn't been allowed to breathe, and now it's starting to revitalize," he said.

epriddy@semissourian.com

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Pertinent address:

Cairo, IL