Rock Falls today

People helping people is what Rock Falls is all about. Since its founding in 1839, residents have pitched in and worked together to make things happen in Rock Falls. They built the city’s first shops, homes and industries. They built the first schools and churches. They built a library, parks and more businesses.

Today, the city's 9,000 residents continue to work together to build what they need, whether it be a walking bridge across the Rock River or a riverfront development project. City leaders also work together to bring in new business and strengthen existing ones.

Work is moving forward on the newest member of the city’s public utilities family: a fiber network. Rock Falls can now boast that it’s a gigabit city, and the city is working on connecting residents to its broadband service, which can provide speeds up to 1,000 megabits per second.

Rock Falls is focused on developing its riverfront, cleaning up empty factories and redeveloping them for commercial use. In recent years, the city has finished the second phase of the RB&W District, turning a former industrial site into a green space, complete with an entertainment venue, a trail, Art in the Park sculpture display, and restrooms.

Another project, announced in 2018 and headed up by local developer Pete Harkness, will bring a 46-unit hotel — from My Place Hotels — to the RB&W site on East Second Street. Plans have also been discussed for a retail center on another parcel nearby.

Larry McCormick, owner of McCormick's Nursery and Garden Center in Sterling, recently turned the former Rock River Tool and Die building into a banquet hall and business conference facility – the McCormick Event Center – and Matt Prescott, owner of the Candlelight Inn, and his business partner, Tim Kendrick, have brought an upscale restaurant to the building, and in a nod to the area’s past, named it The Industrial Restaurant.

The city also hopes to see new development along state Route 40 and Interstate 88. Rock Falls has partnered with the neighboring towns of Dixon and Sterling, as well as economic leaders from Lee and Whiteside counties, to attract industry to the I-88 West Corridor.

Downtown Rock Falls is fortunate to have retailers, restaurants and service providers in nearly every building.

Tax increment financing districts also are important to developing Rock Falls. The Holiday Inn Express & Suites, which opened in May 2016, in the RB&W District, is one product of the city’s Riverfront TIF.

Other retailers and hospitality service providers can be found along the city’s other main thoroughfares.

Alex T. Paschal/apaschal@shawmedia.com David Zahn’s “Confluence” is among the pieces on display at RB&W District Park’s “Art in the Park” display in Rock Falls.