Gov. Pritzker Attends Grant Award Ceremony for Lewis University

ROMEOVILLE, IL - Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker came to Romeoville on Tuesday Nov. 19, the second visit to the village in as many weeks. This time, he came to attend a ceremony at Lewis University that both honored Romeoville as a city, and saw the university's new "Innovation Hub" business incubator program awarded a $75,000 grant check. Both the city's recognition and the check were part of the "CommunityWINS (Working/Investing in Neighborhood Stabilization)" Grant Award.

"I'm so excited to be here because we've got a burgeoning environment for incubators across the state," Pritzker said."Right here in Romeoville, it seems like, in one of the fastest growing counties in the state of Illinois, it's getting help from people to launch businesses. It seems like a great opportunity."

CommunityWINS is a nationwide collaborative program between the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the Wells Fargo Foundation. In 2019, the program's website reported that it awarded about $1 million of grant funding to different cities.

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"Launched in 2015, the nationwide CommunityWINS program, recognizes nonprofits and cities that drive neighborhood stabilization, economic development and jobs creation," a news release from the Village of Romeoville read.

The release went on to describe how, from a pool of 139 applicant cities in four different population groups (small, medium, large and metropolitan,) Romeoville was among only eight chosen to receive grant funding in 2019. Other recipients included New Haven, Connecticut; Albuquerque, New Mexico; and Atlanta, Georgia.

At the ceremony, Mayors Conference Representative Eugene Lowe credited both Romeoville Mayor John Noak's leadership and the Innovation Hub's potential to foster the local economy as deciding factors in the village's win.

"Romeoville won the top small city award... An outstanding award, an outstanding achievement," Lowe said.

Noak said he first applied for the CommunityWINS Grant Award at the start of 2019, shortly before the January Mayors Conference' national meeting in Washington D.C. He said that he hopes the recently launched Innovation Hub - now $75,000 richer -will help build opportunity not only in Romeoville but in surrounding communities as well.

"The university will get the funding for the [Innovation Hub] program, and it is a joint program with the Des Plaines Valley Enterprise Zone... with the city of Joliet, the city of Lockport, Rockdale, and also the County of Will," Noak said. "We're pretty excited about it. The really unique thing about this is it's multi-jurisdictional in nature; it includes participation from the Enterprise Zone. This means we have access to the resources of the Enterprise Zone in conjunction with Lewis University."

But behind all the adulation, a question for non-business majors remains: exactly how does an "Innovation Hub" - or any incubator - help build economic development or "neighborhood stabilization?"

Dr. Ryan D. Butt, Lewis University's Dean of the business college, said that the hope was that the Hub would provide local entrepreneurs the resources and knowledge they needed to make their business ideas a reality. This, in turn, would hopefully drive growth and create jobs as the new business' customers put money into the venture and thus, the larger local economy.

But to make money you have to spend money, and even though the Innovation Hub is designed as a nonprofit, it isn't free. For services including everything from providing office space and business hardware to holding strategy sessions and helping hire employees, Butt said clients could pay $3,000 or more.

Cost of doing business aside, Pritzker said he hoped the Innovation Hub would help boost Illinois' footprint in the global digital economy.

"This Hub is a critical part of a statewide movement that places Illinois at the forefront of business development and the forefront of the digital economy," he said.

When asked if he had any concerns about Wells Fargo being the main benefactor of the CommunityWINS program, given the corporation's own sordid history with "neighborhood stabilization," Pritzker spoke about what he considered the general importance of private investment.

"What I know is that when private individuals, when nonprofit organizations, when businesses are willing to invest in communities, to help them do something that they may not have all the resources to do - like job creation, like startup innovation - that's good for everybody in the area," he said.

He added that he was glad that Wells Fargo partnered with the Mayors Conference.

"I'm very pleased that [the Wells Fargo Foundation] was able to work with the U.S. Conference of Mayors, a reputable organization that does great work all across the country," Pritzker said.

The Wells Fargo Foundation has dedicated $6 million to the CommunityWINS program for 2020, the Mayors Conference website said. As part of its philanthropic strategy, Wells Fargo said on its own site that it would commit $1 billion to address the housing affordability crisis through 2025.

Wells Fargo made $4.6 billion net income in the third quarter of 2019, according to the company's own reports.