COVER STORY
Historic properties for sale
Historic buildings in downtown Springfield have been put on the market. Several properties along South Second, as well as on Capitol Avenue and Seventh Street, are ready for new owners, while two others have recently changed hands. Court and Karen Conn…
LATEST NEWS
Sangamon County approves data center
Sangamon County Board members voted 17-10 to approve a $500 million data center project on April 7, just weeks after…
Marc Ayers to resign from County Board
Springfield resident Marc Ayers isn’t ruling out running for Ward 7 alderperson or mayor in April 2027, or maybe another…
Sangamon County seeks applicants for Mental Health Board
Following voter approval of the March 2026 referendum, Sangamon County is now accepting applications for individuals interested in serving on…
County Board could approve data center 15 days after tabling propsal
Pushback from citizens and threats of voting out board members might not prevent the Sangamon County Board from approving a…
A battle for control
At the March 31 Springfield City Council meeting, several members expressed discontent with what they feel is a lack of…
UIS union begins strike
Members of the University Professionals of Illinois (UPI) Tenure / Tenure Track union of University of Illinois Springfield officially began…
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NEWSLETTER
News
Mass text message
Many Sangamon County residents received a text message around 4:45 p.m. on April 1, promoting the proposed CyrusOne data center…
Sangamon County Board still considering data center proposal
One day after the Sangamon County Board voted March 23 to table a data center proposal, the city of Aurora,…
Illinois Times partners with podcast
Karen Conn was recently interviewed on Tony Stang’s podcast, The Mosiac Project. Stang is the pastor of Central Baptist Church,…
A call for police reforms
Residents packed the Springfield City Council chambers on March 31 to demand an independent investigation, and even reforms, of the…
opinion
Poll: Cost of housing a problem in Illinois
A YouGov poll conducted last month shows Illinois registered voters overwhelmingly believe that the cost of renting and buying a home is a problem…
Why the UIS faculty are on strike
An art professor at UIS told me her supply budget hasn’t changed in more than a decade. She covers the shortfall out of her…
Letters to the editor 4/2/26
We welcome letters. Please include your full name, address and telephone number. We edit all letters. Send them to editor@illinoistimes.com. SLOW DOWN The coverage…
Don’t let perception become the narrative
The My Heart’s Downtown campaign has been in the news recently, and while I am grateful to see attention focused on our city center,…
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Food and drink
The French Connection
One of the most rewarding aspects of travel is discovering local culinary traditions – those storied techniques and heritage dishes…
Two cheers for chives
The past week was a tough one for plant lovers. The first half of the month was unseasonably warm, precipitating…
An ancient food preservation method for today
Confit and rillettes are two traditional methods of food preservation. Dating back to ancient civilizations, these methods originated as a…
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Music
Midweek music muster
Hello everyone to the month of April and all the music therein. We missed making an April…
Music through March
Here we go into the last weekend of March with weather that to say the least –…
March to the music
As we leave behind the recent blast of uninvited, somewhat unexpected and definitely unwanted wintry weather and…
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ARTS AND CULTURE
Garden serendipity
Last Sunday, Christians around the world celebrated Easter by joining Mary in the garden outside the empty tomb and proclaiming the day of resurrection. The…
Josh Sabo interview
Josh Sabo, executive director of Heartland HOUSED, sits down with Tony Stang of The Mosaic Project for an extended conversation about the unhoused community in…
Are we making progress on efforts to address homelessness?
In 2020, our community began to take tangible steps to evaluate gaps in services to address homelessness and chart a new way forward. Community leaders,…
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Best Of Springfield 2025
See the results Every year, we ask our opinionated readers to tell us about their favorite people, places and things in the Springfield area. Over the decades we’ve been doing this, we’ve continued to tweak both the process and the results issue to try to keep things fresh and interesting. While anything food-related typically dominates…
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