[rceDia]

Other than a hospital, schools and big box retail, what is the economic "engine" attracting new homeowners? Big box retail was the place to spend the cash, but what is the source of "earn the cash"? Illinois is a top state for "fleeing" citizens.

[toomuchtodo]

Maytag used to have a refrigerator manufacturing facility in Galesburg, which moved to Mexico around the turn of the aughts, and incurred a loss of thousands of jobs. Usual NAFTA hollowing out of middle America story.

Can’t be a strong town when you’re a dying town.

https://www.peoriamagazines.com/ibi/2015/mar/galesburg-after...

[niftich]

BNSF Railway has a major classification yard in Galesburg. Just like other railroads, they use their Chicago yard for intermodal traffic (loading containers from the trains onto trucks and vice versa), and use a nearby yard outside of Chicago to manage general traffic.

According to the Knox County Area Partnership [1], the largest employers in Knox County (of which Galesburg is the urban center) are BNSF, the hospital, the schools, Knox College, Blick Art Materials, Gates Corporation, the local government, and the prison.

It's fairly common for small US towns to have the local health system, local school system, and Walmart (or the local grocery store) as the largest employers. Galesburg is more fortunate and is more like a typical midwest town, with a handful of manufacturers and warehousing-type jobs that exceed the standard rural fare, and a college also.

[1] https://www.knoxpartnership.com/top-employers/

[everybodyknows]

A private liberal arts college, 1200 students:

https://www.knox.edu/about-knox/fast-facts

Festivals in the historic district downtown:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galesburg_Historic_District

Doesn't seem like enough.

And note this:

> Walmart builds their buildings to last only 15-20 years and then builds a new facility. We are in year 15 of our Walmart, so they are exploring their next rebuild. If Walmart leaves its current location ...

[Cupertino95014]

Forgot about terraforming Mars; we need to terraform Illinois. The weather makes it a great place to be from. The scenery is also seriously lacking, except maybe on the western borders and the southern part, where hardly anyone lives.

Aside from that, you have the permanently toxic politics.

Don't come at me; I used to live there.

[arcbyte]

Agrigulture and federally funded/entitled raikroads built the patchwork of dmall towns in the early/mid 1800s. Starting in the 1940s those things began disappearing.

New homeowners are either local kids or retired people bringing their retirement money to lower cost of living areas.