Building Small vs. Betting Big

Lessons Ignored: Streator vs. The Great City Thinkers
This article is part of Lessons Ignored: Streator vs. The Great City Thinkers, a continuing series in The Streator Standard exploring the proposed Beck’s development through the lens of some of the most influential voices in city planning—Jane Jacobs, Charles Marohn, Christopher Alexander, William H. Whyte, Jim Heid, and others. Each installment examines how their ideas apply to Streator’s future and what we risk losing when we trade vision for short-term fixes.

Building Small vs. Betting Big

By The Streator Standard Staff

Jim Heid is not a man who romanticizes decay. His philosophy isn’t about letting old buildings crumble or freezing a city in amber. It’s about replacing the “silver bullet” development mindset with something humbler, smarter, and far more effective: small, incremental projects that build value over time.

In Building Small: A Toolkit for Real Estate Entrepreneurs, Civic Leaders, and Great Communities, Heid lays out a blueprint for communities that want to grow without gambling their future on one massive project. The heart of his message is this: you don’t transform a place by betting everything on one big idea—you transform it by layering many smaller ideas until they add up to something big.

The proposed Beck’s gas station at Park and Kent Streets is the opposite of this philosophy. It’s the kind of “all eggs in one basket” development that locks up a prime block for decades with one single use, erases layers of history and adaptability, and risks leaving behind an expensive problem when the business eventually changes hands or closes.

The Fragility of a Single Tenant

Heid often warns about “fragile development patterns” — those dependent on a single tenant, a single revenue stream, or a single industry. This fragility is particularly risky when public subsidies are involved, because taxpayers are effectively betting on the long-term health of one private business.

Gas stations are already facing major headwinds. Electric vehicles are slowly increasing market share, and while they may not replace gas stations overnight, they will change their role. Add in fluctuating fuel prices, changes in consumer behavior, and rising environmental compliance costs, and you have a business model that is anything but guaranteed decades of stability.

By giving this site to one corporate operator, Streator isn’t just committing to the business — it’s committing to the footprint that business requires: wide turning radiuses, fuel tanks buried in the ground, and a layout that’s difficult and expensive to repurpose.

The Cost of What We Give Up

Heid talks about “opportunity cost” as the silent killer of community potential. In economic terms, it’s the value of the next best thing you could have done with the same resource. In city-building terms, it’s what you give up when you use prime land for something that doesn’t pull its weight.

The block next to City Park is not just any piece of land — it’s one of the most visible and strategically located in Streator. And it’s not empty. Right now, it contains:

• St. Mary’s Church – An architectural landmark with visibility, character, and adaptive reuse potential.
• Rectory – A solid, adaptable structure that could serve as offices, housing, or boutique lodging.
• Parish Hall – A flexible space perfect for community events, performances, or shared commercial kitchens.
• Flink/Shultz Vault Building – A unique industrial structure with open plan, block walls, and tall ceilings, ideal for food halls, makerspaces, breweries, or artist studios.

Heid’s approach would treat these not as obstacles but as ready-made building blocks for a layered, mixed-use district. Demolishing them all for a single tenant is like bulldozing a library to build a single vending machine.

Small, Local, and Layered Works Better

The Building Small toolkit is filled with real-world examples of towns that took the opposite path:

• Durango, Colorado – A cluster of old warehouses became home to multiple small businesses — breweries, restaurants, bike shops — through phased redevelopment. No one project defined the district; the variety kept it adaptable.
• Bentonville, Arkansas – Instead of clearing downtown blocks, the city supported incremental renovations that allowed small-scale local entrepreneurs to thrive alongside larger anchors. The result: a vibrant downtown with year-round activity.
• Dubuque, Iowa – The Millwork District was redeveloped one building at a time, attracting small developers and creating a mix of housing, offices, and retail that now generates more tax revenue per acre than almost any other district in the city.

In every case, the place became more valuable because it wasn’t controlled by one entity or locked into one use.

Financial Productivity Over Time

Heid’s point — echoed by Strong Towns research — is that compact, human-scale development usually generates far more tax revenue per acre than big single-use sites.

When a block is subdivided into multiple businesses, it creates multiple tax bills. When it’s walkable, people visit multiple businesses in one trip, multiplying sales tax. And when the spaces are adaptable, they can shift to new uses without needing wholesale demolition.

A gas station, even if it’s profitable for its owner, will never generate the same per-acre return to the city as a cluster of businesses. And when its underground tanks need to be removed in 20 or 30 years, the city may be left with an expensive remediation job before the site can be reused.

What Building Small Could Look Like Here

If Jim Heid were leading the charge, he might outline a phased, small-scale redevelopment plan for the block:

• Phase 1: Adapt the Flink building for a food hall with rotating local vendors and park-facing outdoor seating.
• Phase 2: Convert the parish hall into a community kitchen and event venue, anchoring the site with civic energy.
• Phase 3: Reuse the rectory for short-term lodging or professional offices.
• Phase 4: Transform the church into a cultural venue — live music, theater, exhibitions — making it a draw for both locals and visitors.

Each phase would stand on its own, build momentum for the next, and attract a mix of investors rather than one corporate checkbook.

The Beck’s Plan is the Opposite

Beck’s is “instant development” — one large move, one player, one program. It erases the diversity of buildings and uses in a single demolition, and it replaces them with the least adaptable urban form possible.

Heid would see this as a high-risk, low-reward play that locks the city into a future it can’t easily change. And because it’s being done with public incentives, the risk isn’t just Beck’s — it’s Streator’s.

Why This Matters for Streator

Jim Heid’s work is filled with a quiet optimism: the belief that communities can build lasting wealth if they resist the temptation of the quick win.

The irony is, the “big” development often feels more certain in the moment — ribbon cuttings, photo ops, and the illusion of progress. But it’s the small, layered projects that truly endure, because they grow with the community instead of outpacing it.

If we choose Beck’s, we’re choosing a short burst of construction over decades of adaptability. We’re choosing to wipe away multiple chances for local investment in favor of one corporate lease. And we’re choosing to believe that one bet, placed now, will still look wise in 30 years.

History — and Jim Heid’s research — suggest it won’t.