Quality-of-life attractions, cheaper land, technology boost some rural counties in Illinois
By Jim Getz
Of The Post-Dispatch

GREENVILLE, Ill. - Standing outside of her antiques store on the northeastern corner of Greenville's courthouse square, owner Linda Baumhoegger recalled a trip down a nearby country lane shortly after she and her husband moved to Bond County five years ago.

A table piled with tomatoes, zucchini and cucumbers was placed by the side of the road. On it was a jar into which previous buyers had dropped money. The sellers were nowhere in sight, and their farmhouse was hundreds of yards away.

"I thought to myself, 'Only in Greenville,'" Baumhoegger said.

Those quality-of-life attractions for residents -- coupled with cheaper land, diversification of local economies, technology and a labor force with a strong work ethic -- enabled many rural Illinois counties to stage a comeback in the 1990s after a brutal farm economy drained them of population in the 1980s.

Still, many rural counties continue to suffer, particularly those in western Illinois that are dependent upon crop prices that have stagnated and those in Southern Illinois that were devastated once the 1990 Clean Air Act closed high-sulfur coal mines. Thirty-one of the 74 Illinois counties designated as rural by the U.S. Census Bureau continued to lose population in the 1990s.

But 38 of those rural counties, more than half, went from losses to population gains. Five rural counties - those outside Metropolitan Statistical Areas such as the Metro East area - built on population gains made in the previous decade. And the few counties that grew in the 1980s lost population in the following decade.

Experts in rural studies say that, in general, the counties and small towns that did best:

* Are within an hour's drive of a major metropolitan area, such as St. Louis.

* Feature a natural amenity, such as a large lake.

* Sport an interstate highway in their front yard.

* Have a willingness to diversify the local economy and market themselves.

Each of the six counties that hug Interstate 70 from St. Louis to Terre Haute, Ind., feature at least one of those characteristics. All gained population in the last decade.

Collectively, they went from losing nearly 1,600 people in the '80s to adding nearly 18,000 over the next 10 years. Although that 5 percent gain in the '90s lags behind the statewide population increase of 8.6 percent, it's certainly better than the 0.5 percent loss the six experienced during the farm crisis.

Prison helps growth

Of course, about half of Bond County's 18 percent population growth can be attributed to the opening of a federal prison there in 1994. That boosts Greenville's population by about 1,100 on any given day and helped the city grow to 6,955 residents last year, up from 4,806 a decade earlier. In addition, about 130 of the institution's 308 employees live in Bond County.

But that still leaves about 1,300 new residents in the county not associated with life behind bars. Who are they? Pat Curry, a community economic development coordinator with the University of Illinois Extension Service, says they are people who have decided it is worth the price of an hour commute to St. Louis to live in a rural setting.

"It's that outer ring of counties - Jersey County, Bond County, certainly Monroe - places where you start to see population growth that you otherwise wouldn't expect because there's been no industrial growth," Curry said.

Which means those counties are the next step out from the suburbs.

"They're looking for the quiet, Mayberry features that they can find in those communities," said Steve Kline, manager of mapping programs for the Illinois Institute of Rural Affairs in Macomb. "And they're willing to drive 30 or 40 miles to live in a community where they feel schools are providing good education for their kids and a ruralness that's good to raise a family in."

That's the case with Baumhoegger. Formerly South Carolinians, she and her husband, Robert, who maintains corporate jets at St. Louis Downtown Airport in Cahokia, were attracted to Greenville because of nearby Governor Bond Lake and the First Christian Church. Their son Dan, now 22, graduated from Greenville High School.

As Bond County's supervisor of assessments, Don Albert can attest to the growth - he's responsible for issuing building permits in the county and assessing every home's value.

When he started in 1992, he said, "You could count the number of $100,000 homes on your fingers." Today, especially on the shores of Governor Bond Lake north of the city, $350,000 homes are not unusual.

The largest number of building permits Albert issued in the '90s were near the lake and in Burgess Township - the one closest to St. Louis on I-70.

Rural areas need marketing

But it isn't just Norman Rockwell qualities that are revitalizing rural communities. After all, those qualities have always been there. The key in growing rural areas, businesspeople and experts say, is to market the strong points that businesses and industry want.

That has meant a willingness to diversify the local economy, to seek out small and midsized companies instead of goliaths, and to market less expensive land and a labor force with a strong work ethic. Greenville, Nashville and Litchfield - each an hour from St. Louis - are using these as selling points to lure prospective businesses to their industrial parks.

"The interstate is a help, but you have to have a great labor force to bring them in," said Jack Schultz, president of Agracel Inc., a real estate development company in Effingham, Ill., about 100 miles northeast of St. Louis on Interstates 70 and 57. "There are places along interstates that don't have growth. People aren't just going to show up on your doorstep and say, 'I love Effingham, Illinois.'"

Schultz ought to know. After seven years in Brazil, he returned to Effingham in the early 1980s and weathered the decade's withering economy.

"It was a tough time in the '80s," Schultz said. "We had three of our biggest manufacturers looking to either shut down or relocate. A group of us got together in the 1980s and said we need to diversify. We really don't want any more large manufacturers that can disrupt the economy."

Schultz said the strategy had resulted in about 6,000 light manufacturing jobs in businesses such as Southeastern Container, which makes plastic bottles for Coca-Cola; Bunge Foods, an agribusiness; Nukabe, which makes auto parts; and McCloud USA, which employs 600 in Effingham to produce telephone books.

Schultz teamed with Charles Barenfanger, a businessman in Vandalia, Ill., to build the first short line railroad in Illinois in decades. It opened to serve the Effingham industrial park in May 1999. Now Barenfanger, who remembers being nervous in the '80s as the East and West coasts recovered before the Midwest rallied, is laying the groundwork for a similar line at Greenville's park. He shares Schultz's faith in rural areas' strong labor force and quality of life.

It's the latter that Greenville's city manager, Mark Cundiff, has noticed the most. He would add another category to the prison employees, blue-collar workers and commuters: Greenville College graduates who choose to stay and alumni who choose to return to retire.

Although he's been on the job only 2 1/2 years, he has seen a dentist and several doctors decide to put down roots.

"I think that says a lot about the community," Cundiff said. "If you just drive past this community on Interstate 70, you have no idea what this community is about."