The City of Monmouth was awarded a $2M grant last month by the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity to support an expansion at Smithfield.
City Administrator Lew Steinbrecher says the money will go towards increasing the production capabilities of the hog processing plant.
“That’s going to help pay towards the drilling of a new production well, construction of a new elevated water tower out by Smithfield to make sure that we can provide adequate water supply to the hog processing plant. They’ve been investing millions of dollars over the last few years and they’re going to continue to modernize that plant.”
Steinbrecher says that the grant is a good start towards the project and the city will be moving forward in the months ahead.
On the subject of grants, Monmouth is still pursuing funding to re-beautify the city’s public square.
Steinbrecher tells WGIL that despite the project scoring better compared to many of the other projects that were awarded funds, the Maple City project still didn’t get funding.
“There were, like, 101 grants awarded this summer and our project actually scored higher than 43 of those projects that did receive funding. We’ve been encouraged to resubmit with the next grant cycle, which is Fall of [2022]. So, we will plan on repeating that application for $2 million next fall.”
He from what his administration was able to discover, the state held hiking and biking trail projects at a higher priority than to downtown renovation work.