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ALTON – Alton city officials are moving forward with plans to redevelop an approximately 30-acre piece of currently vacant land into the Wadlow Town Center.
Alton City Council members on Wednesday unanimously passed a resolution directing the Director of Planning & Development to issue a Request for Proposal (RFP) for the development of the Wadlow Town Center.
“Wadlow Town Center” refers to the former site of the Robert P. Wadlow Golf Course, located between the Alton Amtrak/Multimodal Regional Transportation Center and the Holiday Inn Express & Suites. The resolution states Wadlow Town Center has been “identified as a key site for redevelopment and strategic investment” in Alton.
Under the resolution, Planning & Development Director Greg Caffey must prepare and publicly publish the RFP no later than Feb. 17, 2026. Caffey previously estimated the roughly 30-acre site could be developed into six lots of various sizes.
Christine Favilla, Three Rivers Project Coordinator with the Illinois Sierra Club, said the city had previously issued an RFP for the Wadlow Town Center site in 2017 and urged current City Council members to uphold certain guidelines regarding walkability and environmental conservation.
“We ask that the key design-related requirements be more focused on land use and environmental considerations as it was in the RFP of 2017 – and that specifically included mixed-use development,” Favilla said. “The primary requirement was for a development that would create a walkable center and active uses like shops and restaurants on the ground floor.”
Favilla said the previous RFP for the site also called for “public greenspace and conservation,” requiring a portion of the site to “remain as free and open space” with protections for the creek corridor and nearby wetlands and wildlife habitats. However, she said development of the Holiday Inn Express created environmental issues at the site, which could be further impacted by future development.
“Their use of a 30-inch pipe resulted in stream bank erosion and they’ve failed, and the city did not press them on it,” Favilla said. “The hotel opened a year and a half ago, yet to date, the trail has not been fixed where the Holiday Inn Express crossed twice … any future developers, their stormwater best management practices will affect the creek and the surrounding greenspace.”
While city officials were not familiar with the specific RFP from 2017, they indicated the site is under stricter requirements than most zoning districts regarding stormwater, sidewalk and trail connectivity, parking, and more, and that any future development would have to abide by those requirements.
With no further discussion, the City Council’s vote tally remained unchanged from Wednesday’s Committee of the Whole meeting, where committee members also passed the item unanimously. More details are available in this related story on Riverbender.com.
A full recording of the Dec. 17, 2025 Alton City Council meeting is available at the top of this story or on Riverbender.com/video.
