Opinion

Eyes on the Street, Not Pumps on the Corner

By The Streator Standard August 12, 2025 4-minute read

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.

By The Streator Standard Staff

In 1961, when cities across America were gleefully swinging the wrecking ball, Jane Jacobs published The Death and Life of Great American Cities. It was a brick through the windshield of urban planning orthodoxy. She was not a trained planner, yet she saw—more clearly than the professionals—that the bulldozer-and-blueprint approach was gutting the very neighborhoods it claimed to save.

Her thesis was deceptively simple: cities are complex organisms, and their health depends on a rich mix of uses, building types, and people. Tear out the fine-grained fabric of older, smaller buildings and you don’t just lose character—you lose the ecosystem that allows small businesses to sprout, neighbors to meet, and streets to stay safe.

Jacobs’ words were prophetic then. They are painfully relevant now.

Because here in 2025, Streator is preparing to erase an entire block of that fabric—the gothic profile of St. Mary’s Church and its surrounding structures—to make room for a Beck’s gas station, car wash, and convenience store.

The location? Not in some remote industrial strip. Not on a highway interchange. But right next to City Park, on the edge of downtown—the place where, according to our own 2014 Downtown Strategic Plan, we should be encouraging more foot traffic, more mixed uses, and more reasons for people to linger.

What the Numbers Tell Us

Jacobs’ theory—that old buildings are the unsung heroes of urban vitality—was confirmed in 2014 when the National Trust’s Preservation Green Lab published Older, Smaller, Better. The study examined Seattle, San Francisco, and Washington D.C., breaking each city into 200-by-200-meter squares and comparing areas with older, smaller, mixed-age buildings to those with larger, newer structures.

The findings were unambiguous:

Economic Performance: Older, smaller buildings housed more small businesses per square foot. They were better incubators for entrepreneurs, who could afford the lower rents and adapt the quirky spaces.
Social Vitality: Mixed-age blocks saw more people on the street at more times of day—meaning more “eyes on the street,” Jacobs’ gold standard for safety.
Cultural Life: These areas had more independently owned restaurants, shops, and cultural venues—places rooted in their community, not imported from a corporate design template.

Or as the report put it: “Established neighborhoods with a mix of older, smaller buildings perform better than districts with larger, newer structures when tested against a range of economic, social, and environmental outcome measures.”

What a Gas Station Actually Gives You

Now put those metrics next to what we’ll get with a Beck’s:

One use, one purpose – moving cars in and out as quickly as possible.
Minimal job creation – a handful of low-wage, often high-turnover positions.
No incubation space – entrepreneurs don’t lease 200 square feet between the slushy machine and the jerky display.
Dead space for pedestrians – people don’t stroll through gas stations unless they’re lost or being chased.

The irony is that Beck’s doesn’t need us. They’ve already bought the land. They’ve already decided Streator is a viable market. The TIF money being discussed is not a make-or-break incentive—it’s a public subsidy for a private project that will never perform anywhere near the productivity of the block it replaces.

What Other Cities Have Learned—For Real

In McHenry, Illinois, residents took issue when city officials announced plans to tear down a vacant historic bank at the corner of Green Street and Routes 120/31 to make way for a gas station with a fast-food and convenience component. Citizens objected, citing increased noise, light pollution, traffic congestion, and the loss of a historic connector to downtown. The proposal sparked months of local debate and underscored the reality that once a key site is given over to a single-use, auto-oriented project, it’s nearly impossible to stitch it back into the pedestrian fabric of the community. (Source: The McHenry Messenger)

In contrast, Geneva, Illinois faced the prospect of losing its unique Pure Oil gas station—a charming 1930s Tudor-style building. In 2012, the City Council voted 8–2 to preserve and adapt it for new use. The building now serves as a branch of Geneva Bank & Trust, preserving the historic character while providing a functional business use that fits the surrounding area. This adaptive reuse didn’t just save a landmark—it kept the corner active, walkable, and visually connected to downtown. (Source: Patch.com)

The lesson from both cases? The decision we make with a high-visibility site today will either contribute to the city’s vitality or lock us into decades of missed potential.

Streator’s Choice

The 2014 Downtown Plan lists “improve buildings and streetscapes” and “create additional destinations for residents and visitors” as top strategic goals. Replacing a historic church with a corporate gas station does neither.

Yes, the current site has been neglected. Yes, it could look better. But “better than vacant” is a terrible standard for one of our city’s most visible corners.

Jacobs warned that cities which accept the lowest bar for improvement inevitably get the lowest bar for results. Once the block is gone, it’s gone. And what replaces it will shape that edge of downtown for decades.