Fermata’s projects are often protracted affairs, epical rather than ephemeral. Our work often extends for a decade or more, with the completion of each phase catalyzing another. Frequently the people we began a project with move on to new opportunities or retirement before we finish. We are often the last one’s standing, the only people remaining who remember precisely how it all began.

One door opens as another closes, and one of ours, the Illinois River Road, has recently shut. Our work along the Illinois River began over seven years ago, in March 2003. Meetings with Michael Reuter, Doug Blodgett, and Jo Skoglund of the Illinois Nature Conservancy in Peoria then focused on their needs for a public use plan for a new property they were restoring – Emiquon. Once one of America’s most productive fisheries, Emiquon had been drained and farmed for corn for nearly a century. The Conservancy had acquired the property, and had plans to restore the backwater wetlands and marshes.

During the same trip I met Keith Arnold and Vicky Clark with the Peoria CVB, an organization whose support would lead us ultimately to a new national scenic byway. Vicky had been contemplating a scenic byway for the region, and I quickly became interested in the Illinois River Road (a moribund state byway that ran along the river). After we completed the public use plan for Emiquon, the Peoria CVB asked us to help organize a byway along the river. We began (wisely) at the local level, and eventually developed the Illinois River Country Nature Trail. Fermata developed guides for each of the trail loops, and an organizational structure that would serve us well in the next phases of the work.

Next we were asked to develop the Corridor Management Plan for a new federal byway, the Illinois River Road. In 2005 the byway received federal designation, one of two that we had been associated with to receive designation that year (the other being Wetlands and Wildlife in Kansas). The byway next received an enhancement grant from the National Scenic Byway Program, and we were asked to help develop many of the enhancements. After masterminding an interpretive plan, Fermata has now completed a byway guide, brochure, maps, and interpretive signs. The signs were delivered to Peoria in early August, bringing our work to a close.

We thank Anaise Berry (Director), Keith Arnold (now at the Corpus Christi CVB) and Vicky Clark (at the EDCCI), the Economic Development Council of Central Illinois, the Heartland Partnership, and communities such as Pekin, Peoria, Canton, Princeton, Ottawa, Chillicothe, and Havana for their support and interest over the years. The byway board has been incredibly helpful and supportive over the years as well, and a few (Terry Svob and Michael Wiant, for example) have been involved since the beginning. Finally, I want to thank the Fermata associates both past and current who continue to generate sterling work after all of these years. Without people such as Brenda Adams-Weyant, Sandra Murphy, and Maja Smith involved, none of this would have happened. I am indeed blessed with such a creative, accomplished, and patient team.

For more information about this byway project, the executive summary that we prepared is available here.

Ted Eubanks
15 August 2010