Lino’s Shipping Container Restaurant Could Be A Prototype For A Future Box Market In Loves Park
By Kevin Haas
ROCK RIVER CURRENT
LOVES PARK — Lino’s Restaurant introduced a different concept for this area when it opened its second location: It was the region’s first eatery inside a shipping container.
The Italian restaurant installed the classic Fauld’s oven it uses at its original shop inside a red metal container on an empty plot of land along Riverside Boulevard.
Now, that approach is serving as a prototype for what could become an entire market of shipping container restaurants, retail spaces and other businesses.
It’s part of an effort in Loves Park to create an entertainment district around Mercyhealth Sportscore Two and Rivets Stadium. Box markets, as they’re sometimes called, are already used in places such as Chicago, Greenville, South Carolina, and London.
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It could be a good fit here, too, the people behind the plan say, by giving entrepreneurs a means to test the market with a low-cost facility with built in foot traffic from sports tournaments happening within walking distance.
“Every other happening city across the United States, these little districts are popping up,” said Charlie Schweinler, part of the third generation of family that’s running Lino’s. “It’s an easy way to test the market without having to fully commit the dollars that are needed to make it happen and then have it flop.”
A First Step
The shipping container market is the first step of a multifaceted placemaking plan orchestrated by the Parks Chamber of Commerce, city of Loves Park and Place Foundry, a strategic development firm run by former Transform Rockford director David Sidney.
The goal is to create magnetic districts across Loves Park and Machesney Park. The area near Sportscore Two is the first target. The box market concept was already in the works when Lino’s introduced its plans, making it a fitting first go.
“Rockford is focusing in on downtown, and Loves Park is focusing in on this area,” Schweinler said. “I’m really hopeful and excited that something is going to happen fast.”
A future box market village concept in Loves Park by Place Foundry.
Placemaking is a multiyear, multiphase strategy to spur economic growth and job creation in underutilized areas. Aside from the box market, there is a vision to incorporate residential development north of Orth Road that would blend with the area’s agricultural character. Place Foundry refers to it as an “agrihood.”
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There’s also plans to incorporate more indoor and outdoor play and entertainment options. The box market is seen as a stepping stone for more mixed-use development in the first placemaking district, which is an area bounded by Riverside Boulevard to the south, Interstate 90 to the west, Argyle Road to the east and Harlem Road to the north.
Sidney, the CEO of Place Foundry, said his firm has shared the vision for the area with landowners. There’s enough buy-in from property owners that he expects the box market could start developing in 2024.
“They’re not committing to anything yet, but they’re seeing this vision,” Sidney said. “They see what the city’s trying to achieve. We just don’t know which property owner is going to go first.”
The city of Loves Park may incentivize developers by creating a business development district, in which an additional 1% sales tax is charged on all purchases and the money is funneled back toward improvements. That type of district is also being used as part of the approach to spur redevelopment of Rockford Speedway.
The boundaries for Loves Park’s first placemaking district are Riverside Boulevard to the south, Argyle Road to the east, Harlem Road to the north and Interstate 90 to the west.
A Business Incubator
Box villages combine both indoor and outdoor space. There can be to-go restaurants like the curbside service Lino’s offers, or a small array of chairs, tables or bar seating can provide a sit-down eatery.
The type of businesses also vary, from established companies to startups. At Boxville in Chicago, for example, the container village started in 2014 with a bike-repair shop and it now has 17 containers with clothing, books, herbal tea, food and other retail.
Nathan Bruck, economic development and planning manager for Loves Park, sees the potential for it to serve as a business incubator.
“You have a reduced rent for — say, one, two or three years — and then after that term is up, hopefully business is good for them and they’re going to want a brick-and-mortar and they’re going to want to stay in the community,” Bruck said.
Business owners would benefit from the traffic that comes from tournaments hosted at Sportscore Two, and those families would benefit from having several eating and entertainment options within walking distance, Bruck said.
“You can park in one spot and then everything is accessible,” he said. “If you’re from out of town, you can park at your hotel, and then from there you can walk, you can get an electric scooter, whatever, but you don’t have to keep jumping in your car.”
Louis Mateus, the general manager of the Sportscore complexes for the Rockford Park District, sees the potential for it to bolster the area’s reputation as a destination.
“The whole village atmosphere, the whole community atmosphere, I think it’s so cool to have,” Mateus said. “The more you can get people to come to our community and be busy doing things, the more it’s going to help the reputation of our community. … This could be a positive thing that keeps people involved in our community.”
A rendering of a future box market shows how the space south of Rivets Stadium could be used.
John Groh, the president and CEO of the Rockford Area Convention & Visitors Bureau, said the goal for that area has long been to have a campus-like cluster of experiential options. That vision has been building for years with the construction of the Loves Park YMCA, new hotels in the area, turf fields and more.
“The plans that are currently coming into focus really are a fulfillment of the original vision back around 2000 for Sportscore,” Groh said. “If you look at some of the more successful, nationally recognized sports facilities … you have the combination of experiential restaurants, hotel, retail and the transportation linkages that could tie it all together.”
Groh said he hopes to see the plans come to fruition, both in Loves Park and on the other side of Riverside Boulevard in Rockford.
“It truly could become a national destination,” Groh said.
Steve Malliet, the new president of the Rockford Rivets, saw a similar concept come to fruition at one of his previous baseball jobs in Durham, North Carolina. There, an entertainment district was built up with a new ballpark as the catalyst.
This rendering shows the concept for an “agrihood,” a residential development that meshes with the agricultural character of the area.
The area in in Durham was blighted and dangerous before the development moved forward, Malliet said. Today, it’s home to all sorts of shops, restaurants and businesses.
“If you go back to Durham today and look at what’s happened, not only is it safe, but they are thriving,” he said.
Loves Park has an advantage over Durham, Malliet said, because there’s already a core of millions of annual visitors with Sportscore, Rock Cut State Park, Mercyhealth Javon Bea Hospital-Riverside, Rivets Stadium and Costco.
Building a box market and entertainment district here can help give visitors things to do before and after baseball games or soccer tournaments.
“It makes this a one-stop destination where people can come and have dinner, have drinks afterwards, they can get retail merchandise here — shops that are maybe themed around the ballpark and the team,” Malliet said. “Instead of just having them here that two and a half hours, they’re going to spend four or five hours here.”
Lino’s Next Step
While plans for the entertainment district take shape in Loves Park, Schweinler is moving forward with plans to capitalize on Lino’s six-month old curbside shipping container.
He’s preparing to provide outdoor seating near the 53-foot-long red shipping container this summer. Tables would have QR codes that allow people to see a menu and order from their table.
“Instead of bringing it to the car, we’ll bring it to the table over there,” he said. “We’ll allow the soccer kids to come down and kind of capitalize on having 10,000 kids at your doorstep.”
He hopes to see a future like what Loves Park leaders envision, with walking paths that lead to his restaurant and other places for visitors to spend their time between games.