Since 2018, the SSGA has helped dozens of organizations, businesses, and individuals bring their visions to life here in the Springfield and Sangamon County area. Discover the stories in the articles and videos below.
SCHEELS Sports Park at Legacy Pointe
Creating a new legacy for Springfield
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In the fertile fields outside Springfield, corn and soybeans usually flourish. But since 2023, a new field of dreams has begun cropping up: a 95-acre sports complex with the largest indoor sports dome in the United States.
Introducing SCHEELS Sports Park at Legacy Pointe.
Featuring eight outdoor, lighted, multi-use turf fields, the state-of-the-art complex will host a variety of popular sports, from soccer, football, rugby, and lacrosse to basketball, volleyball, pickleball, wrestling, gymnastics, cheer and dance. With its 196,000 square-foot indoor Springfield Clinic Dome, the complex will draw athletes from throughout the Midwest year-round, bringing $25 million in new annual revenue to the Springfield area.
“Softball season. Soccer season. Volleyball, basketball. The way they designed the complex will keep it chugging 12 months of the year,” said Ryan McCrady, CEO of the Springfield Sangamon Growth Alliance (SSGA), a public-private partnership promoting economic growth in the region.
SCHEELS Sports Park will provide venues for both competitive and cultural events, hosting traditional league play and tournaments as well as community fairs, concerts, and corporate and private rentals. Expected to draw regional and national tournaments every week, McCrady says the Park is poised to become Illinois' premier sports destination.
“This project will change how people see Springfield. It’s a sign we can achieve big things in our community when we work together.” - Ryan McCrady, SSGA
A story of innovation in design and execution
The Legacy Pointe Development took root in 2006 when the developers purchased 300 acres of open land on Springfield’s southside. Starting in 2018, SCHEELS Sports Park‘s journey has been as unique as the vision behind it.
“This whole development was done in a way that's never been done anywhere else in the country,” said McCrady. “With SCHEELS purchasing the naming rights, Legacy Pointe providing the vision, local government offering incentives, and local banks providing the financing, this has been a true public-private partnership.”
The catalyst bringing it all together, per Legacy Pointe developer Dirk McCormick, is the Springfield Sangamon Growth Alliance. “This couldn’t have happened without the help of Ryan and the SSGA.”
Featuring all-new restaurants, hotels, shopping, and the multi-use sports park, Legacy Pointe will be a destination for locals and travelers alike, drawing 250,000 new visitors to the area and increasing tourism by 10–15% annually.
“What this development really did is bring people together in our community who formally had not been working together,” commented Legacy Pointe developer Steve Luker.
“This project will change how people see Springfield,” added McCrady. “It’s a sign we can achieve big things in our community when we work together.”
Pillsbury Mills Redevelopment
Moving Pillsbury Forward:
Unpaving the Way to a Stronger Community
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For 72 years, the Pillsbury Mills flour plant kept Springfield working and the nation fed. But since closing in 2001, the property had become a blight on its north Springfield neighborhood, with 18 acres of land and 500,000 square feet of crumbling buildings contaminated by asbestos and lead paint.
For retired fire marshal and Springfield native Chris Richmond, Pillsbury is personal. In the 20+ years since closing, the site has become a hazard, attracting crime, lowering property values, and endangering the environment, all while contributing nothing to the local economy.
“It’s a major public safety issue. It really just needs taken down and redeveloped,” Richmond said.
From its founding in 1929, Pillsbury Mills played a pivotal role in Springfield’s civil and social life. Today, 12,000 people live within a one-mile radius. To gauge community attitudes, Richmond and his team conducted a survey.
“We asked the neighborhood what they wanted on the site. And they said, ‘Anything.’ Anything would be better than what was there. That was hard to hear.”
“So a group of us decided that hopelessness is no longer acceptable in our community,” he added. In 2020, they formed Moving Pillsbury Forward (MPF), a not-for-profit dedicated to eliminating blight at the site and empowering redevelopment of the Pillsbury neighborhood.
Richmond realized early on MPF would need strong partners to put their mission in motion. Ryan McCrady, President & CEO of the Springfield Sangamon Growth Alliance, was one of their first calls.
“When you’re an economic developer one of the most important things you bring is a network of smart people who can help with challenging tasks,” McCrady said.
Their first challenge was wresting the property from a negligent owner with multiple environmental violations, tax and legal charges. Backed by the Growth Alliance’s expertise in redeveloping contaminated sites, MPF purchased the property in March 2022.
Next, the Growth Alliance helped MPF win an Environmental Protection Agency technical assistance grant for $150,000 of consulting with a brownfield redevelopment specialist. “It really helped us focus on how to get from where we were to that end goal of full redevelopment,” Richmond commented. “It just supercharged our entire program.”
McCrady credits Growth Alliance leadership for the project’s initial success. “For decades, a lot of entities ran away from this project. But our board of directors showed the courage to get involved.”
With additional grants of $2,652,000 from the EPA, $1 million from the federal government, and $1.5 million from the Springfield City Council, MPF’s work is well underway. Environmental clean-up of the Pillsbury site has been completed. Richmond estimates demolition of the remaining structures will conclude in Spring 2026.
After that?
“The vision is having that site redeveloped in a way that grows our economy and still supports the community,” McCrady said. “We want to be really respectful to the adjacent neighborhood, because frankly, they've put up with a problem for a long time.”
MPF and the Growth Alliance are optimistic about the future. “I think it’s going to excite everybody and really change their understanding of what Springfield can accomplish when we all get behind something together,” said McCrady.
“Once we tackle this, we know we can tackle any challenge that comes our way,” added Richmond. “We're about three-quarters of the way there, and we're really looking forward to moving it all the way through to the finish line.”
I-55 Stables
Riding High in Sangamon County
When model Bella Hadid closed out 2024’s New York Fashion Week with a cutting horse demonstration, she proved what Sangamon County natives, Brandy and Ken White, have known for years:
Horses are hot.
From casual trail riding to competitive barrel racing, participation in equine activities is rising. In fact, the equine industry’s contribution to the US economy grew 45% between 2017 and 2023.
“The horse industry is growing tremendously,” commented Brandy. “People are getting involved because it’s something the whole family can do together.”
For the Whites, horses are more than a hobby. They are the future.
In spring of 2025, the couple opened I-55 Stables & Arena in Divernon, IL. With 100 stalls, a spacious pasture, heated indoor arena, outdoor recreational event arena, and RV hookups, it is the region’s premier equine boarding and event facility.
“We wanted to bring something local, try to make it a landmark,” said President Ken White.
Avid barrel racers, Brandy and Ken would drive 3-5 hours every weekend to horse shows and competitions. They knew first-hand what makes an equine facility successful. “Georgia to Texas, you name it, we’ve been there,” Ken said. “We thought it would be so easy to create something here.”
Equestrian events typically draw 100–200 people from Friday-Sunday. But previous efforts to build equine tourism in Sangamon County had fallen flat, Ken explained. “We’re doing it differently. Not just the rodeos, but the barrel races, the mounted shooting, the flag races. There’s a lot of different events we can do with the right associations.”
While the Whites are masters in the arena, coordinating permits and zoning for a 40-acre new enterprise was a bit out of their wheelhouse.
“Smaller businesses don't have those resources in-house,” said Springfield Sangamon Growth Alliance President Ryan McCready. “That’s where we can help.”
Calling on their network of business experts, the Growth Alliance helped streamline and accelerate the complex process of building a business.
“It was a night and day difference from trying to figure it out ourselves,” Brandy commented. “Ryan brought everyone to one table, so we could ask all our questions then and there. It was done in a couple of hours.”
“They made it so easy to be able to make our dreams a reality,” added Ken.
The Whites aren’t exactly ready to ride off into the sunset. They have big plans for the future.
“We're hoping to grow it to 10 to 15 employees where we have multiple riding lessons every evening and the events running through the weekend,” he said.
“Everybody knows the Chatham Sweet Corn Festival is a big annual thing for Sangamon County. I’d like to put something together for the other smaller towns like Divernon and Glen Arm and Auburn.”
“We want to tie in the Route 66 vibes here, give travelers an extra place to stop,” added Brandy. “When people travel here, they go out to eat, they buy gas. The Stables are going to help the county and the villages and the cities. It's going to bring more revenue to the area.”