'Too important to fail': Efforts underway to bring Barber-Colman project back to life

The future of Rockford's Barber-Colman site remains uncertain after a Rockford City Council vote squandered a $430 million chance to eliminate a vast eyesore along a major city gateway Monday night.

Rockford City Council on a 7-6 vote amended a proposed development agreement to require J. Jeffers to reach a collective bargaining agreement with union labor.

City Legal Director Nick Meyer said it is a requirement that has never before been made by City Council and that it killed the development. J. Jeffers had warned that it would walk away if a project labor agreement was mandated by City Council.

J. Jeffers had proposed to buy the more than 22-acre former factory campus of dilapidated and graffiti stained buildings from the city for $500,000. It promised a redevelopment project that would transform the campus into a neighborhood that would save the historic buildings and create more than 900 residential units, businesses and parks — all hinging a complex web of financial arrangements now threatened by the labor agreement.

"We were being truthful — that if this became a part of the agreement, it was something the developer was unable to agree to," Meyer said. "There is no project."

But there's still hope, said newly appointed Transform Rockford Executive Director Wally Haas.

More: Barber-Colman could cost the City of Rockford millions. Here's how it plans to pay

J. Jeffers officials were meeting internally on Tuesday to decide where they go from here.

"I am disappointed, but I think there is still some hope," Haas said. "People can come together. It's going to be tough going. There's people working very hard inside and outside the administration with Jeffers to try to save this. This project is too important to fail."

Meyer said there are various scenarios in which the amendment could be rescinded or changed, but those ideas are not so far being discussed. The project, for now, appears to have evaporated.

On Tuesday, Mayor Tom McNamara, Ald. Mark Bonne, D-14, and State Rep. Maurice West, D-Rockford, said that they had heard of no further talks on any of the issues a day after an emotional City Council vote.

In the hours leading up to the city council vote, West scrambled to avert a vote that would threaten the project that promises to turn a dilapidated historic factory campus in a neglected part of the city into Colman Yards, a thriving neighborhood along South Main Street..

West said arranged a meeting with Alan Golden, president of the Northwestern Illinois Building Trades Unions, and Brian Loftin of Milwaukee-based J. Jeffers & Company, in hopes that the two men could come to an agreement on their own.

Unfortunately, that did not happen, West said. An offer was made to negotiate a project labor agreement in good faith.

"Parties couldn't agree," he said.

Bonne said he continues to doubt that this is end of the development agreement, given the millions J. Jeffers has already invested, the $4 million state grant that West secured for it and the millions in no-interest loans City Council is still willing to put behind it.

Bonne said there "was clearly an attempt to pit" labor interests against minority resident interests. Aldermen were told union labor would be unable to provide enough minority and women workers for the project, he said, something he believes is untrue.

"If we had the building trades and Rep. West and the developer in a meeting with a proposal on the table that wasn't a PLA but an agreement to negotiate in good faith to achieve the PLA, if we were that close hours before the Council meeting, I just do not believe they are ready to walk away," Bonne said. "Why would they? I don't see the incentive to cut off their nose to spite their face at this point."

West said the major players were allowing the dust to settle before assessing where to go from here.

"No one is talking right now," West said. "Everyone is still in their feelings about whichever way they thought it should have went. We are regrouping."

Jeff Kolkey can be reached at  (815) 987-1374, via email at jkolkey@rrstar.com and on Twitter @jeffkolkey.

This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: Future of Rockford Barber-Colman site remains unclear after vote