The city of Rochelle is considering issuing alternate revenue bonds for potential projects at the Rochelle Municipal Airport and the Rochelle Technology Center that would likely total $2.7 million, City Manager Jeff Fiegenschuh said Nov. 20, 2025.

The airport project would see the city construct a $1.9 million, eight-unit hangar to be leased out to consumers, City Public Works Director Tim Isley said. All current city-owned hangar space at the airport is currently full with waiting lists. The hangar project could see $1.2 million in grant funding after the city funded it up front.

The Rochelle Technology Center work would involve electrical upgrades to the system that supports Rochelle Municipal Utilities fiber service customers, city data center customers, and the information technology system of the city itself. That potential project would cost $550,000, City Advanced Communications Director Pat Brust said.

Fiegenschuh said that if approved by the city council, the bonds could be issued with the borrowed funds delivered by sometime in February.

“We’re just trying to reinvest back into the infrastructure to supply the best service we can for our residents,” Fiegenschuh said. “I would put our fiber up against any other utility. We have employees in town that service our customers. The airport and tech center are both extremely important to our economic development future.”

Brust said the Rochelle Technology Center has two electrical feeds coming into the building, along with a large diesel generator. All three currently feed into one battery backup that then feeds the computer system. The project would provide redundancy so there isn’t one single power choke point in the building.

Having multiple power feeds and redundancy in the case of outages would differentiate the Rochelle Technology Center from other small data centers, Brust said.

“Rochelle is a unicorn in the sense that it’s a municipality that owns a data center,” Brust said. “This building itself is very critical not only to drawing interest from other customers and providing services, but the way the city is structured, all of the fiber communications for all of our different departments and buildings come through the tech center. We want to be able to provide redundancy for customers as well as the city.”

Isley said the Rochelle Municipal Airport currently has seven different hangars with about 40 aircraft based there. The new hangar would be located to the south of the city’s current newest hangar.

Monthly rent and property leasing are the biggest sources of revenue at the airport. More hangar space would result in more lease revenue along with more traffic and fuel sales at the airport. The airport receives funding from the state and federal governments and more takeoff and landing at the airport would result in more federal funding, Isley said.

The new hangar would result in about $2,000 or more in monthly lease payments to the city.

“It’s a long-term investment,” Isley said. “The hangars we have out there now, some of them are 63-64 years old. This would be bringing in $2,000+ per month over the next 75 years. They’re long-lasting steel hangars and you don’t have to worry about salt impacts at the airports. It’s a long-term investment that will bring money to the city for quite some time.”

Isley said if the bonds are issued, he hopes to start construction on the new hangar in early spring 2026. Brust said the tech center project would start after that due to a longer engineering process. The bond funds would have to be spent within three years of the city receiving them.

Fiegenschuh praised the services and revenue that the airport and tech center bring to the community and city.

“The airport is used significantly and we’ve talked about ways to expand and generate more revenue,” Fiegenschuh said. “We’re a unicorn community where we offer all of these services. The airport is a vital cog in our economic development. The case is the same with the tech center. Pretty much all the fiber that runs into the community comes through that data center.”