March 18th, 2008
In February, Melissa Westphal reported that Heartland Community Church was buying back its old location at 601 N. Perryville Road because its new home, the old Colonial Village Mall, couldn’t accomodate its rapidly growing membership.
Heartland sold the Perryville Road building to the area’s largest car dealer, Anderson Automotive Group of Rockford, last year for $4.1 million. Anderson officials said the building was not for an auto dealership, but more of an investment property.
When contacted, Mark Bankord, the church’s directional leader, would not disclose the purchase price but called it a “fair deal.”
Few deals stay secret forever, though, and according to the Winnebago County Recorder’s Office, which recorded the sale Feb. 28, Heartland paid $5 million to get the property back. For Anderson Automotive it was a very fair deal. A $900,000 profit in less than a year is good in any business.
March 18th, 2008
In 2007, for the first time ever, more shopping was done outside of the city of Rockford in the Rock River Valley.
The Illinois Department of Revenue released its year-end statistics this week and it showed a tough year for Rockford retailers. The amount of retail sales tax revenue being returned to the city was $24.7 million, down 1.9 percent from 2006.
In contrast, the amount of retail sales going to regional municipalities increased from $24.4 million in 2006 to $25 million in 2007.
Of course, this was inevitable. Cities such as Belvidere, Poplar Grove and Roscoe are among the fastest growing in northern Illinois and retailers are building where the people are going. Illinois 173 is among the fastest growing retail corridors in the state and 2007 saw the opening of a lifestyle center at CherryVale Mall.
March 3rd, 2008
Working on some banking data Sunday night and I noticed something I failed to report in 2007 — the amount of money deposited at area banks declined last year.
It wasn’t a huge drop, falling from $7.98 billion as of June 30, 2006, to $7.8 billion on June 30, 2007. Still, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. it was the first time since 1996 that the amount of money deposited in Boone, Ogle, Stephenson and Winnebago county banks declined from the year before.
What does this mean? I’m not entirely sure, but if you look at bank deposits for the decade, it appears as if a lot of people benefitted from the high flying housing market of 2003 through 2006.
In 2002, there was $6.24 billion sitting in local banks. That amount increased by 9.7 percent in 2003, 1.5 percent in 2004, 6.8 percent in 2005 and then 7.6 percent in 2006. A lot of families were able to sock some money away and it appears as if they had to give some of it back in 2007. Still, in an economy where consumer debt and family expenses continue to rise faster than wages, any give back is painful.
Rhonda Torossian
Remember her? She was the Rockford loan officer sentenced to federal prison for her part in a five-person mortgage scam ring from 2001 to 2003. The group admitted to falsifying Social Security numbers and creating fraudulent employment verifications, bank checks and credit letters so families could receive mortgage loans insured by the Federal Housing Authority.
Torossian was sentenced in late December to 20 months in federal prison and fined nearly $500,000 for her role. A Realtor in the scheme also received a 20-month sentence while three accomplices received probation and were ordered to pay restitution.
I was going through some public records tonight and she popped up twice.
* In January, the Illinois Department of Professional Regulation yanked her loan origination license for “not informing the Department of a financially related conviction.”
* And in February, Torossian filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection, meaning the taxpayers who footed the bill for the more than 20 foreclosures out of 32 FHA loans Torossian fraudently secured are unlikely to get any of it back.
