Business brisk in renovated downtown Arcola

ARCOLA – When touting Arcola's amazing features, residents are quick to point out their city's bustling downtown.

The bricks paving Main Street are original, and the intersection of Main and Locust Streets was the historic location of the broomcorn palace during decades of broom corn festivals.

Though the opera house that once stood at city hall's address is gone, many buildings downtown have been restored to their original beauty with the new uses in mind.

Wilmer Otto, whose personal office occupies the distinctive turret at the northwest end of Arcola's downtown, has been a major proponent of what he calls "adaptive reuse" of these buildings.

His first of many renovation projects was the building called the Metropolitan Block when it was built in 1872.

The nickname came from the fact that it looked like it was from a big city, with quite a price tag for the day: $30,000.

"It was ... a flagship of the downtown area," Otto said, at the corner of Main and Locust Streets.

Otto tackled that project with a college friend in 1979, and it's now the Arcola Emporium. It houses gift shop, beauty salon, antique store and lunch cafe.

Other Otto projects include the three-story former Schneider Hotel building. It was destined to become a parking lot, but now houses a store called the Olde Brick Wall. Shop owner Marsha Spence points out the store's original tin ceilings.

Otto also renovated a former Collegiate Cap and Gown building into the Amish Interpretive Museum, a former dry goods store into his own real estate office and a former filling station into a vintage shop for a car restorer.

This spring, he plans to become the first person to complete a facade transplant on the building next door to his office. He bought a stamped-tin Mesker facade in southern Illinois and hired an Amish tinsmith to restore and fit it to the building's front.

Otto said the renovations have caused other business and building owners to do their own sprucing up of downtown buildings. He also cited money from Arcola's tax increment financing districts as a motivating factor.

City administrator Bill Wagoner said programs like city's storefront grant are engineered to encourage such development. "Facade improvement is an investment by the community in our downtown area," he said. "The buildings have to be there first and the retailers will come," he said.