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thePeorian.com
T
o hear him tell it, Jim
McConoughey’s move to
Peoria more than a decade
ago could read like a love story.
“We found each other,” he said
recently when explaining how
the dynamics of his job as CEO of
the Heartland Partnership helped
him to finally realize he could
merge his development talents
with a desire to serve the public.
Now if somebody would just
stock some nearby stream with
trout, central Illinois would truly
be his utopia.
“I am absolutely doing what
I want to do and this is where I
want to do it. We intend to stay
here permanently. We like it that
much,” McConoughey said, also
referring to his wife Gina, dean of
business at Illinois Central Col-
lege, and their two children.
Noting he once developed ho-
tels in different cities, he added,
“The hotel business gave me the
opportunity to see the good and
bad of a lot of cities. I like the
way Midwesterners think and do
things, especially in Peoria.”
After more than 10 years
here, he said he now considers
himself a Peorian. “My kids are
even more so, because they have
grown up here. There is a tre-
mendous amount of rootedness
here and that is a good feeling,”
he said.
McConoughey ran for Con-
gress in 2008 and while he didn’t
win the seat the decision to run,
he said, says a lot about his love
for Peoria and central Illinois. “I
have that commitment to serving
people’s needs. I wouldn’t have
run for Congress if I didn’t feel
that connection with Peoria and
its residents.”
McConoughey grew up on a
family farm in a rural area near
Dayton, Ohio. He said he now
sees many similarities between
Dayton and Peoria. “It was very
humbling to watch the decline
of family farms, which was what
was happening when I was grow-
ing up. Then the manufacturing
base in Dayton went through bad
times, like what happened in Peo-
ria. That’s another reason I feel a
connection here, I guess,” he said.
He went to college at Ohio
Weslyan University to study busi-
ness but he started getting inter-
ested in real estate development
while in school. After college he
went to work for a company that
was in the business of building
roadside motels, which were
becoming increasingly popular at
the time.
“It was a good fit, at the time.
I was young, single and I loved
to travel. Most of the travel was
by car from small town to small
town or by small plane, but that
was great,” he said, referring to
those years as his “go-go years.”
Along the way, however, he
learned how to negotiate devel-
opment deals, how to buy land
and build things while being able
to adapt to different towns with
different environments.
Then came marriage to Gina, a
native of Woodstock, Ill., and two
children, teen-agers Elizabeth
and Spencer. The next phase of
his life had begun.
“Having kids really changed
me. They grounded me,” he said.
He and Gina bought a large,
historic bed-and-breakfast in
Lakeside, Ohio, on Lake Erie.
“It was different. It was fun. But
there came a time when living
where you work and having a
bunch of people in your house all
the time wasn’t a great situation,
especially for the kids. It was time
to move,” he said.
Next came a job in economic
development in Elgin, one of
Chicago’s western suburbs. “It
was part of a growth area around
Chicago. I’d cut my teeth in small
towns but there I started getting
volume deals because of the size
Jim McConoughey
The Mid-
Western Way
Jim McConoughey energized by the values
he has found in his adopted community
By Paul Gordon