Peoria Mayor Rita Ali said Thursday that the city of Peoria is in “strong financial position” as she laid out her vision of what the city’s investment priorities need to be in the coming years, specifically her goal to invest dollars in bringing more housing.
Ali’s remarks about Peoria’s financial position and her plan to bring hundreds of new units of housing to the city were delivered to a crowd of about 400 people who gathered at the Peoria Civic Center on Thursday for her annual State of the City Address.
While Ali said Thursday that Peoria was in a strong financial position now, she and City Manager Patrick Urich also recognized that there are financial challenges in the city’s purview that will require “judicious” action.
Peoria, which has a budget that includes $288 million in expenses and $275 million in revenues in 2025, is facing steep rising costs in pension obligations and combined sewer overflow projects that figure to add hundreds of millions of dollars in expenses for the city over the next 10 to 30 years.
Those rising costs — coupled with less money expected to trickle to the city from Springfield and Washington, D.C., as lawmakers there struggle with budget woes of their own — are bringing Peoria into a situation where Urich said the city will need to be “judicious” and “conservative” with its budget.
Ali and Urich both said, however, that the city will continue to make investments in its priority areas.
“I think from our perspective, it just means we have to be judicious and wise about the decisions that we make,” Urich said Thursday. “We still, it’s clear from the mayor’s speech, we have investments we have to make and we are going to continue to make those investments. Whether that’s in our human side, with public safety employees, whether that’s with public works employees, whether that’s with our community development employees, we’re going to make those investments. But we have to look at how we balance that with our available resources.”
In her speech on Thursday and in other public appearances this year, Ali once again called out federal budgets cuts in Washington, D.C., and the impact they will have on Peoria. She specifically on Thursday warned of potential losses in community block grant development funds that have been key across many city programs.
Ali said that Peoria, despite a smaller chunk of funds available from the federal and state government, will continue to leverage relationships with lawmakers.
“We’re going to continue nurturing those relationships with our legislators, both state and federal,” Ali said. “We’re going to look into some private opportunities as well. There’s private foundations, there’s private ventures, there’s joint ventures that happen between government and private industry. We’re exploring all of those opportunities that leverage our resources to do the things we want to accomplish.”
Mayor puts emphasis on new housing investments
Just two days after the Peoria City Council approved a plan to purchase Peoria Exposition Gardens, where it hopes to see a major housing development unfold, Ali on Thursday made the construction of new housing across the city the focal point of her State of the City address.
Ali once again referred to the $1.1 million purchase of the Expo Gardens, where the city hopes 110 to 150 homes could be built, as a “rare opportunity” that she “couldn’t be more excited for.”
Tackling what she calls a “housing crisis” in Peoria has been a focal point for Ali for some time, but on Thursday she pushed it to the forefront of her political agenda, saying it was now the city’s top priority along with public safety.
In addition to highlighting the Expo Gardens housing project, Ali brought forward on Thursday the developers behind five projects: Churchview Gardens in South Peoria; Habitat for Humanity in South Peoria; Chic Flats in the Warehouse District; Madison III Apartments in Downtown Peoria; and the Twelve Oaks duplex development in Central Peoria.
Ali said Thursday that these housing developments, some of which are backed by public dollars, have given Peoria “hope and inspiration.”
“The message I want to send is we need more of this we need more investors because there is lots of opportunity in Peoria,” Ali said. “Peoria is a city of great opportunity, but we can’t do it alone, the city can’t do it alone. We need to attract developers to Peoria like the ones that you see, the ones that you’ve heard from today. We need more of it and we need them to do more of what they’re already doing because they’re doing it well.”
Urich said the city would like to see “several hundred” new housing opportunities every year and said studies have shown that the Warehouse District and Downtown Peoria can absorb hundreds of units of new housing.
“We’re really excited about the future, not only do we want to see growth in our Central Business District, our Warehouse District and south side, but with the Exposition Gardens opportunity, looking at providing another opportunity to grow single-family housing inside Peoria Public Schools properties where we can see new single-family expansion as well.”
Ali and the developer behind the Churchview Gardens project also announced another South Peoria housing venture that will be underway in the next year. A development, called MacArthur Flats, which will be built near the intersection of MacArthur Highway and McBean Street, will provide housing units for people over the age of 55 in South Peoria.
It will be a mixed-use development that the developer said Thursday will break ground sometime next spring.
Ali says Peoria will cut ‘red tape’ from business permitting
Signaling a desire to address a problem Peoria’s business community has been clamoring for for years, Ali on Thursday said the city will focus on streamlining permits for new businesses and cut “red tape.”
Ali alluded to the possibility that Peoria could deploy artificial intelligence programs to help the city design a business permitting process that is shorter and more streamlined.
“We have been hearing from our business and development partners that the city’s permit processes are problematic, that they are too time consuming, restrictive and redundant,” Ali said Thursday. “We’ve heard this repeatedly despite the adjustments that have occurred. Well, it’s time that we reexamine with your input and streamline permit approvals.”
Ali said Thursday that Peoria is a city where business growth and development happens, specifically highlighting growth in the city’s Warehouse District, which she called the “renaissance success story” in Peoria that she said they want to “replicate in other areas of the city.”
“Mixed-use development, commercial, retail and residential is the future and the PNC Bank Building will be our opportunity to prove,” Ali said, referring to the city’s $1.75 million purchase of the PNC Building last year.
The city expects to have bids on the PNC Building from developers in “less than three weeks from today,” Ali said Thursday.
Ali also pointed to Caterpillar’s renovation of a downtown office building, which she said is a $30 million investment that will bring 400 new employees to the area, as evidence that “business is happening in Peoria.”
She also pointed to growth across Peoria’s council districts, a nod to the city councilmembers in attendance at her speech, highlighting new businesses such as Brienzo’s Pizza and Raising Canes in District 4; CJ’s Market in District 1; Dutch Brothers Coffee in District 2; the Gray Oaks Subdivision in District 5; and Jonah’s Oyster Bar in District 3.
This article originally appeared on Journal Star: ‘Strong financial position,’ new housing goals: Takeaways from 2025 State of City address
Reporting by JJ Bullock, Peoria Journal Star / Journal Star
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