Drop in a question of your very own BY CLICKING HERE or by emailing Kathy Reiser at mailbag@news-gazette.com.
In this week’s Mailbag: whether there are consequences for speakers who verbally abuse members at Unit 4 school board meetings … and what it means when Urbana police say one, two or three officers are “on patrol.” Also, reader-requested updates on the new brewpub coming to downtown Champaign, a former Circle K location in Urbana, and local options for recycling Styrofoam.
Perhaps it’s fitting that Brainstorm Escapes, 61 E. University Ave. in Champaign, is a property designed for easy ingress and quick egress on both University and Chester Street. After all, the goal of every escape-room session is for participants to work their way out of the gameroom as quickly as possible.
From 1958 until 1975, it housed Al’s Drive-In Liquors. In the ’80s, it was a floral shop – specifically, A Blooming Business. One commenter on this week’s Now & Then post on Instagram recalled that Karen’s Kloset consignment shop was there for a while.
After that, it was home base for a few different “shopper” newspapers including The Thrifty Nickel, Want Ads of Champaign, and then American Classified Newspapers.
Brainstorm Escapes opened in late 2015. If you’re not sure what an escape room is, the brainstormescapes.com website describes it as a live-action game in which people are locked in a themed room. In order to escape, a team of two to eight persons must solve a series of clues, puzzles and riddles within 60 minutes. Participants must “work together in a high-pressure situation by using their wits, intuition and logic.”
Escape rooms appeal to families, teens and college students, workplace groups and others looking for a way to have fun while they build communication and teamwork. Participants needn’t fear being locked in the room forever; a “brainstorm trooper” is available to guide participants through the process.
“Recent news stories have said the City of Urbana typically has only one to three officers ‘on patrol,’ but what does ‘on patrol’ actually mean? Seems like a fairly routine car accident could easily occupy three patrol officers and leave no officers to respond to anything else….”
“Thank you for giving us the chance to explain” what that term means, said Lt. Mike Cervantes with the UPD Patrol Division. “’On patrol’ refers to the officers actively assigned to patrol the city of Urbana in squad cars, responding to calls for service.
“These calls can range from noise complaints to high-priority 911 emergencies like shootings. Patrol officers are the backbone of our department, providing the first line of response to the community.”
He said UPD has minimum staffing requirements to ensure coverage: “typically, one supervisor and three to four officers are the minimum during various hours of the day. However, staffing levels can fluctuate due to factors like benefit time, injuries, training or vacancies. When staffing falls below minimums, officers may work overtime or be held over to maintain adequate coverage.”
At the same time, he says the reader is “correct that certain incidents, like a serious car accident, shootings, etc. can require multiple officers, leaving fewer resources for other calls. In those cases, we prioritize life-threatening emergencies and hold lower-priority calls until units become available.”
Cervantes also said Urbana benefits from strong partnerships with surrounding agencies, including the University of Illinois Police, the Champaign County Sheriff’s Department and the Champaign Police Department.
“These agencies assist us when needed, though their help comes at the expense of their own responsibilities. In 2024, Urbana officers responded to 26,381 calls for service, with assistance from other agencies in approximately 12% of those cases. While this teamwork is invaluable, our goal is to minimize reliance on outside agencies and handle our city’s needs independently.”
“Champaign City Council member Davion Williams is running unopposed in the April 1 election. Is it too late for someone to mount a write-in campaign for that seat?”
Yes, it is too late for anyone else to run for the seat, according to Champaign County Clerk and Recorder Aaron Ammons. He told us the deadline to run as a write-in candidate was Jan. 30, 2025.
Neil Young, left, and Willie Nelson, right, perform at the first Farm Aid concert on Sept. 22, 1985, at Memorial Stadium in Champaign (Brian K. Johnson).
Watching from under cover at the first Farm Aid concert at Memorial Stadium in Champaign on Sept. 22, 1985.
Morgan Wallen performs at Crypto.com Arena on Sept. 24, 2022, in Los Angeles.
“Why don’t they get some major summer concerts at Memorial Stadium? Couldn’t concert revenue help UI athletics cover some of its rising expenses?”
“Yes, this is an area the DIA is currently studying,” said UI Division of Intercollegiate Athletics spokesperson Derrick Burson. “There are many factors that have to align and a long runway needed regarding scheduling, but it’s something we will continue to explore in the coming years.”
Several other Big Ten football stadiums host summer concerts, including Ohio Stadium in Columbus. The 2025 Buckeye Country Superfest, featuring Jelly Roll and Kane Brown, will be held there on June 21.
Camp Randall Stadium in Madison, Wis., will host concerts by Morgan Wallen this June, and Coldplay in July. And country music star Zach Bryan will play Ann Arbor’s Michigan Stadium on Sept. 7 — the first-ever concert to be held at the biggest stadium in the Western Hemisphere.
Of course, the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Cal., hosts a wide variety of entertainment events throughout the year, not just Big Ten football as home field for UCLA.
Memorial Stadium hasn’t hosted a major concert since Farm Aid in 1985. Kent Brown, longtime sports information director at the UI and a campus historian of sorts, said U2 was scheduled to perform inside the stadium in the early 1990s but canceled and ended up playing multiple dates at Soldier Field in Chicago.
Since Grange Grove’s opening in 2015, the fenced-in area to the west of Memorial Stadium has hosted several concerts — just nothing the scope of Farm Aid.
“I’m seeing activity within the former Destihl space at Church and Neil, and heard it will become a brewpub. What is their timetable for opening?”
As Jana Wiersema reported in November, Blind Pig Brewery owner Matt Monahan plans to open a new Blind Pig Brewpub in the former Destihl restaurant and brewery space at 301 N. Neil in Champaign. Destihl closed in April 2020. Wiersema wrote that Monahan’s goal was to open the brewpub in early 2025.
A few days ago, he said “while it’s too early to set an opening day, our team is slowly growing and working tirelessly through the process. We apologize to our future neighbors and downtown visitors if we’re a little loud, messy or delay your drive. We hope to get through this stage as quickly as possible and to get open to the public this spring. From the folks at the Pig, that is all (for now),” he texted.
Monahan told Wiersema they will not be brewing onsite as much as Destihl did, and he plans to continue using Blind Pig’s existing production facility at 505 N. Market St. in Champaign. The new brewpub will offer food and a full bar, as well as “packaged beer, cider and mead to go,” Monahan said.
Blind Pig Brewing and the bars that once shared the same name previously belonged to Christopher Knight, who opened the original Blind Pig bar at 6 Taylor St. in downtown Champaign, in 1990.
Knight shared in May 2024 that he had sold the two components of the business to different owners and has retired. Downtown Champaign’s former Blind Pig bars are now known as Hound’s Rest and Hound’s Court, and are owned by Jim and Kristen Enderle.
The term “blind pig” came into use during Prohibition, as another name for a speakeasy or establishment that illegally sold liquor for on-site consumption.
“Circle K at Lincoln and Bradley in Urbana is closed but not demolished. The pit along Bradley Avenue is filled and a fence surrounds it. Will there be a project there covering both properties?”
Not as far as we have been able to determine. When I stopped by the former Circle K, 1501 N. Lincoln Ave., a few weeks ago, a contractor told me the fuel and convenience store chain had been leasing the site. He said the property owner decided not to renew the lease when it expired. The gas station’s pumps, pipes and tanks are all gone, and the building is boarded-up.
A search of the Champaign County GIS Consortium database and mapping utility’s ownership data for that lot shows tax bills are mailed to Four Corners Property Trust in Mill Valley, Cal.
The properties immediately south of the former Circle K belong to the City of Urbana.
The former Illinois American Water Company parcels – just west of the former Circle K along Bradley Avenue – belong to DKS Properties, Inc. in Bloomington, Ill. They were sold in 2020 to Campus Housing Investments, and immediately deeded to DKS Properties. Those lots have a fence around them, and signs indicate they are for sale by SVN Core3 Real Estate in Bloomington.
As of its most recent (Jan. 29) update, the City of Urbana’s building-permits database map showed no active permits for any of those properties.
“Meeting after meeting, I watch a woman — always the same one — berate two Champaign School Board members over nonspecific issues like ‘policy’ and not caring about kids. Does Unit 4 have any written rules about harassment by speakers during public comment? If so, how are they enforced?”
Unit 4 Chief Communications Officer Stacey Moore provided a copy of Board Policy 2:230, Public Participation at Board of Education Meetings and Petitions to the Board — and she noted that the policy also is printed on the back of the request-to-comment cards that speakers must fill out before they may address the board.
The policy says any speaker must “conduct oneself with respect and civility toward others” and otherwise abide by Board Policy 8:30, which covers visitors to and conduct on school property.
Specifically, “individuals shall not:
a. Strike, injure, threaten, harass or intimidate a staff member, board members or any other person.
b. Use vulgar or obscene language.
c. Impede, delay, disrupt or otherwise interfere with a board meeting (including using cellular phones in a disruptive manner).
d. Engage in any conduct that interferes with, disrupts, or adversely affects the district or a board meeting.
e. Violate other district policies or regulations, a directive from an authorized security officer, or a district employee or board member.”
The policy also says the board president “shall have authority to:
1. Shorten the time for each person to address the board to conserve time and give the maximum number of people an opportunity to speak.
2. Limit the duration of public comment on any one subject to 20 minutes. If several individuals wish to address the board on the same subject, the group is encouraged to appoint a spokesperson.
3. Extend the 30-minute time limit for public participation.
4. Extend the three-minute time limit for individual speakers.
5. Determine procedural matters regarding public participation not otherwise covered in board policy.”
Beyond providing a copy of the policy, Moore did not offer specifics on how the rules for speakers are enforced.
“In downtown Gibson City, the local radio station is played on loudspeakers. When and how did that tradition start?”
Mayor Dan Dickey tells us “we had speakers downtown years ago and they did play WGCY until a union representative stopped it. We have since installed new speakers and have paid subscriptions for the music we play.”
Kofi Cockburn with the banner of his jersey during the halftime ceremony to honor his jersey in a NCAA basketball game at the State Farm Center in Champaign on Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2025.
“Scott Richey of the N-G reported that Kofi Cockburn qualified for his jersey to be honored because, as a two-time consensus All-American, he met one of the six criteria for that. What are the other five criteria?”
According to the fightingillini.com website, “the University of Illinois has honored its most decorated basketball players in school history by hanging a banner with their name and number from the rafters of State Farm Center. A total of 36 men’s players have earned a spot on this distinguished list.”
Players selected to have their jerseys hung must have achieved any of the following criteria: 1) National Player of the Year 2) Enshrined in the National Basketball Hall of Fame 3) Big Ten Player of the Year 4) Consensus First- or Second-Team All-American 5) Illinois All-Century Team Member 6) Individual whose pioneering efforts made a significant impact on Illinois and international basketball
Raising two former players’ jerseys to the rafters during the same basketball season is a rarity. Prior to Cockburn’s ceremony (Feb. 11) and Terrence Shannon, Jr.’s (Feb. 15), Ayo Dosunmu was the last Illini men’s player whose jersey was raised, in 2022. And before that? The last honored jerseys belonged to Dee Brown, Luther Head and Deron Williams, who played in the early 2000s.
Shannon did not, technically, meet any of the six criteria. But an exception was made because he set the Illini’s single-season scoring record (736 points) last year, despite missing six mid-season games as a result of his arrest for an alleged sexual assault in Kansas. In late January of last year, a federal judge ruled that he must be reinstated to the team. In June, a jury acquitted him of the charges.
Had Shannon not been barred from playing in those six games, it’s widely believed he would have easily met at least one of the criteria for having his jersey raised at State Farm Center.
Dart’s former drop-off site in 2023.
“Isn’t there something Champaign, Urbana and/or the UI can do to offer Styrofoam recycling here at least once or twice a year? They’ve managed to do that in Oswego, Ill. and Hilliard, Ohio….”
C-U has been without a Styrofoam recycling collection site since the former Dart plant in Urbana closed theirs in September 2023. And we still get questions about alternatives every few months or so. Styrofoam is a trademarked name for a particular type of expanded polystyrene (EPS) foam that is derived from petroleum.
Champaign’s environmental sustainability specialist, Nichole Millage, and Urbana’s recycling coordinator, Courtney Kwong, teamed up to provide some answers to specific questions posed by our reader. They said the Oswego collection was hosted by a local church, and the Styrofoam was taken to a nearby Dart Corporation facility in North Aurora for recycling.
The reader also asked if the UI still has a Styrofoam extruder that could be used to densify Styrofoam and make foam blocks that could be turned into insulation — as a facility in Hilliard, Ohio has done.
UI Facilities & Services spokesperson Steve Breitwieser said several UI stakeholders collaborated in 2015 with Community Resource, Inc. in Urbana to set up Styrofoam recycling on campus. The company transported expanded polystyrene (EPS) from campus and fed it through an extruder off-site.
When Community Resource was sold to Midwest Fiber Recycling in 2017, the buyer did not want to keep the extruder at the facility. The device was subsequently removed and transferred to a nonprofit organization elsewhere in Illinois.
Breitwieser said campus departments that find themselves accumulating Styrofoam are encouraged to work with their vendors to identify take-back programs or agreements for sustainable disposal of their surplus EPS foam.
Millage and Kwong wrote “none of our local (materials recovery facilities), where the recyclables from this community end up, have a Styrofoam densifier, and to our knowledge, none of them are pursuing obtaining one.”
Of course, municipalities and local contractors must look at industry trends and weigh the costs vs. benefits of investing a lot of resources in Styrofoam-recycling facilities or programs.
“Based on our own personal experiences, it appears that packers and shippers are increasingly moving away from Styrofoam and using more environmentally friendly packaging options such as biodegradable materials, recycled cardboard, etc.”
While Millage and Kwong said they were disappointed that Dart ended its local Sytrofoam collection program, “over time, we have received fewer citizen inquiries about local Styrofoam recycling options, but we still continue to discuss options to include expanded polystyrene recycling in communitywide sustainability initiatives.”
