By Janine Pumilia, editor
Imagine working in a place where people of many different professions can brainstorm together, buy products and services from each other and grab lunch together, without hopping in cars to fight traffic—just like people in old time neighborhoods once did.
Imagine living in a residential neighborhood where you have real options on how you get to work, school or the market—you can drive, bike, motorbike, take transit, use a scooter or walk.
Imagine a region that values its natural open spaces and doesn’t allow them to be swallowed up with needless urban sprawl, destroying precious farmland, wilderness and wildlife habitats in the process.
All of these visions are part of a movement called “New Urbanism,” which is not so much a new concept as a return to an old one.
When Rockford native Ashlesha Nigam moved to Boulder, Colo. to attend college and work in real estate, she was captivated by the New Urbanism projects she witnessed there because “they just made a lot of sense for everyone involved,” says Nigam.
“If we don’t do something to start re-creating those kinds of neighborhoods, we’re not going to know where we came from. Our neighborhoods are meant to bring us back together, not to separate us from one another with tons of concrete. I’m passionate about fighting urban sprawl.”
Nigam earned a master’s degree in business management and a master’s in health administration from the University of Colorado at Denver, and a B.S. in psychology from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She enjoyed the community of out-of-box thinkers she was mingling with in Colorado, and had no intention of returning to Rockford. Then, a unique opportunity presented itself. It was a rare chance to translate her anti-sprawl sentiments into meaningful practice.
Nigam’s parents, Rockford physicians T.K. and Kumud Nigam, asked her to be involved in the development of some prime land they had bought years ago as an investment along Perryville Road.
“Where better to implement a New Urbanism concept than in Rockford?” Nigam thought.
“Rockford’s population has grown about 3 percent since the 1970s, yet it has sprawled out, geographically, about 70 percent since then,” Nigam says. “You just can’t keep up that kind of sprawl rate, and even if you could, what kind of quality of life would be left in our region?”
In 2002, she returned home to form Summit Real Estate Developments, Inc., with her parents and brother, Avneesh B. Nigam, who holds an MBA from San Francisco State University and works in the Bay Area but commutes often to Rockford specifically to work on the Perryville Place project. The family members, along with other hand-selected professionals, put their heads together to consider what the best use of space would be for their valuable land along Perryville Road.
“We wanted to do something good for Rockford,” Nigam says. “My parents made their careers here and feel the city has been good to them. We wanted to go above and beyond what developers are required to do, and to do something very responsible and aesthetically attractive.”
The result is A Perryville Place—a $15 million mixed use, high density, 75,000-square-foot building complex on 4.2 acres, set to open this autumn. About 15,000 square feet of the space is reserved for retailers, and about 65 percent of the total building was rented out by the end of summer.
“What separates A Perryville Place from the rest is the philosophy that work and life can coexist,” says Nigam. As the upper levels of the development are devoted to business, the lower levels will be teeming with social activities, including high-end retail, restaurants, and entertainment.
"They designed it with people's lives in mind. They're very futuristic in their views, and it's good that we are entertaining some new ways of thinking about design in our area," said Sue Mroz, director of regional planning and economic development for Winnebago County.
Mroz first heard about this style of development a few years ago at an International Shopping Center Convention where "mixed use" was the buzzword, she said.
On the Perryville Place Web site, Rockford Mayor Larry Morrissey has called it a "refreshing departure from the 'bigbox' buildings."
But the project has been stalled for at least a year. The delays have been attributed to poorly installed windows that have since been corrected, and not being able to find the right tenants to match the building's focus, Nigam said.
Staying true to her contemporary approach has caused delays to Nigam's first-ever development in Rockford.
"We've really stuck to our guns, which isn't easy. Having the mixed-use idea is a big deal to me. ... It's easy to say, we can just get anyone in here, but (the mixed-use approach) has made it more challenging for sure. But we've stuck through everything and weathered everything," she said.
Included in the 75,000-square-foot building is RAM restaurant, which will occupy 5,000 square feet on the first floor. Also moving in is Medi-Scan, an open MRI center and a clinic owned by Nigam's father, Orthopedic Sports and Rehabilitation Clinic of Rockford.
RAM will also run banquet services on the second floor. The third floor will be home to virtual office suites, where a receptionist handles a business's calls, among other services. Furnished suites range from $500 to $1,500 a month.
The fourth floor will also hold a 2,500-square-foot fitness center. Nigam declined to provide the name of the business.
Still, A Perryville Place is about 75 percent leased. According to building permit records, the project has a price tag of more than $6 million.
A Perryville Place does not look like your average office building, and that may be one reason why it's been difficult to market. The complex is four buildings joined together, and each one is on a different angle. Passers-by have called it "that zigzag building," Nigam says. Some still aren't sure what it is.
"Some people like it, but they're just not sure about it because it's too modern. I can see what they're talking about, but that's what we like about our design," she said.
But with any innovative idea there may be some reluctance from other developers to join the trend, explains Glen Turpoff, executive director of the Northern Illinois Building Contractors Association.
"This is a concept that you think is part of the 21st-century wave. But with anything, people have to get used to it, believe in it and see it operational," said Turpoff, who has hailed A Perryville Place as a "pioneer project" for the area.
"Communities are their own evolutions. And we've evolved a little more conservatively. ... Frankly, there's probably going to be a lag. You have to see if the space is filled and if people are going to utilize it. And if it's thriving, it's going to be a magnet," he said.
After A Perryville Place, Nigam says, she'll look forward to building more around Rockford. She also won't be changing her work-relax-live concept. "Any project you work on will have some bumps in the road. But you get over that. There are no regrets," she said.
