Local coverage
Project conversations across Champaign County.
Active coverage depends on independent provider availability -- each community page below covers local housing and site context around Champaign.
Urbana
The fire that leveled much of Urbana on October 9, 1871 forced a construction boom that produced most of the historic commercial and residential buildings still standing in the city's core today.
Local planning notes →Savoy
Savoy didn't incorporate until 1956 and stayed small for decades, then became Champaign County's fastest-growing municipality between 2000 and 2024, more than doubling in size.
Local planning notes →Mahomet
Mahomet was platted in 1832 on the west bank of the Sangamon River specifically because settlers wanted the water -- making it the first community established in what is now Champaign County.
Local planning notes →Rantoul
Chanute Field went up in 1917 to train Air Service recruits, and the technical-training mission that followed for the next 76 years drove waves of construction around it to house military and civilian staff on a schedule dictated by the base, not by ordinary town growth.
Local planning notes →St. Joseph
St.
Local planning notes →Tolono
Tolono grew up at the 1856 junction of the Illinois Central and the east-west Great Western Railway, ten miles south of Champaign, with early residents largely employed by the rail lines themselves.
Local planning notes →Monticello
Monticello became the Piatt County seat in 1841, and the wealth that later lined State Street's 'Millionaires Row' also built the Allerton estate -- grand homes constructed with more elaborate below-grade systems than the area's typical farmhouse.
Local planning notes →Villa Grove
When the Frisco railroad rebuilt Villa Grove as a division point after 1902, the site was picked partly because the Embarras River offered ample water for railroad operations -- the same river that runs past the town today.
Local planning notes →