Author: Mike Bailey
“Peoria does get some hard knocks. But … have faith in Peoria. We’re going to come back with a vengeance.”
That was fundamentally the message from Kim Blickenstaff and Greg Birkland, the one-two punch behind KDB Group, as they spoke to the Rotary Club of Peoria on Friday. The duo updated some 80 Rotarians on the dizzying array of entrepreneurial and philanthropic projects they have launched since Blickenstaff’s homecoming in central Illinois less than two years ago after a long and successful biotech career on the West Coast.
Between Peoria Heights, Peoria, and Blickenstaff’s hometown of Spring Bay, KDB Group has nearly 20 projects in the works. Near the top of that list are Sankoty Lakes Resort & Retreat in Spring Bay and the Scottish Rite Cathedral in Peoria, both of which are nearing completion. The Betty Jayne Brimmer Center for the Performing Arts in Peoria Heights has been open for about a year, and ground will be broken on the boutique hotel there later this fall. “We almost lost another iconic building here in Peoria,” Blickenstaff said of the Scottish Rite, another performance and banquet venue where the renovation work is about 85 percent done, with the pandemic setting back its grand opening likely to late October.
“We like to repurpose,” said Birkland, CEO of KDB Group, and the Scottish Rite is among the finest examples of that.
The two waxed enthusiastic about the Sankoty Lakes project, which they are developing with local sportsman and contractor Dwayne Atherton. The canvas glamour tents are up, the RV park is ready to go, and the trout stream is flowing at what both believe can become a premier ecotourism destination in the Midwest.
“It’s like the Upper Peninsula” in Michigan, Blickenstaff said of the deep, clear blue water there that bubbles up from the Sankoty Aquifer.
A very special focus of KDB Group’s “great outdoors” developments is to do outreach to inner city children who otherwise may have very little exposure to a natural world different from the grittier one many live in every day, said Birkland, who’s a board member at CASA of the Tenth Judicial Circuit, an agency dedicated to advocating for and improving the lives of children who’ve had their lives turned upside down while being shuffled through the court system.
Already, the site has received some 4,000 reservation inquiries, while a recent job fair attracted more than 200 applicants in what is the largest economic development project in the modern history of tiny – population less than 500 -- Spring Bay.
Indeed, Blickenstaff joked about a conversation he had with the mayor of Spring Bay, in which he asked what the sales tax was going to be. The mayor replied, “I don’t know. We don’t have any sales.”
Until now.
Sankoty is not the only investment KDB Group has in store for Spring Bay. They’ve also purchased the Spring Bay Marina and the site of the former – and legendary – Village Inn. Established nearly two centuries ago, Spring Bay is one of the oldest communities in the state of Illinois. The Illinois River was “the highway” between St. Louis and Chicago at the time, and Spring Bay thrived commercially as a result. When the railroads arrived, the town was all but abandoned.
KDB Group wants to revive that “old town” feel and look and make Blickenstaff’s hometown “a place people are going to want to live” again.
Perhaps the biggest flurry of KDB Group’s activity has been in Peoria Heights, where Blickenstaff & Co. have grand designs for the waterfront and marrying that back up with its lively downtown atop the bluff. A reimagined Al Fresco Park is on the drawing board there, and another central Illinois-born, coast-based businessman – landscape architect Theodore Hoerr, originally of Dunlap, now of Manhattan – has been hired to unleash his creative talents there.
Meanwhile, the eagerly anticipated boutique hotel has picked up some momentum with the hiring of a lifestyle, boutique hotel operator out of Seattle. “We’re moving along,” said Birkland. “I know it doesn’t look like it, but we’ve gutted the inside. It’s almost to the point where the shell is ready to begin working on.”
All in all, Blickenstaff and Birkland and their KDB Group are bullish on central Illinois.
The response from one Rotarian seemed to sum it up: “Thank you so much for investing in our community.”