{"id":119242,"date":"2026-08-22T23:36:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-22T23:36:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/119242\/"},"modified":"2026-08-22T23:36:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T23:36:12","slug":"geneva-urges-support-for-east-state-street-businesses-during-construction-with-carl-the-cone-shaw-local","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/119242\/","title":{"rendered":"Geneva urges support for East State Street businesses during construction with Carl the Cone \u2013 Shaw Local"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Illinois Department of Transportation<\/a> is rebuilding East State Street-Illinois Route 38 from Glengarry Drive to the Fox River in Geneva<\/a>, a multi-year, $22 million project that began in January and is expected to be completed late next year.<\/p>\n

The project is welcome in that it will upgrade the city\u2019s east corridor with roadway widening, streetscape enhancements, bike lanes, traffic signal upgrades, new street lighting and water main and storm drainage infrastructure improvements.<\/p>\n

But all that construction work comes with disruption for some 65 local businesses there.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe road has been torn up for months,\u201d said Sara Parisi, owner of Bad Guys Bagels at 501 E. State St.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s definitely affected business, but what are you going to do? It\u2019s a necessary evil,\u201d Parisi said. \u201cI\u2019m sure it\u2019s going to be great, but until then, we\u2019re just trying to mitigate things. We\u2019re telling customers to come in through the back on Route 25 and avoid the construction.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Riganato<\/p>\n

Riganato Old World Grille in Geneva. (Shaw Media photo)<\/p>\n

The city has started a promotion to encourage people to patronize those businesses during construction, using a cartoonish mascot called Carl The Cone.<\/p>\n

Carl has a happy face, while holding a three shopping bags in his right hand a sign in the left proclaiming, \u201cSupport East State Businesses.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking as sweet as candy corn \u2013 and nearly in the same shape as the traditional fall candy \u2013 he smiles from banners and signs installed along the East State Street corridor.<\/p>\n

The city created a web page also, called Support East State Street<\/a>, part of a social media campaign to promote the businesses during construction.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s cute,\u201d Parisi said, of Carl.<\/p>\n

Jimmy Nicolaou, who owns both Riganato Old World Grille at 700 E. State St. and Honeybird Fried Chicken at 427 E. State St., said he got an email from the city about Carl.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t go to deep into it,\u201d Nicolaou said. \u201cI hope it does get people to come over here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Riganato has been open since 2012. Honeybird, located just across the street, opened in April.<\/p>\n

Like Parisi, he also noted there are ways to get to the restaurants from Route 25 and duck the construction.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re a little down, but we are fighting,\u201d Nicolaou said. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing we can do about it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Illinois Department of Transportation is rebuilding East State Street-Illinois Route 38 from Glengarry Drive to the Fox…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":119243,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7],"tags":[114,229,65,898,899,19399],"class_list":["post-119242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-geneva","tag-business","tag-construction","tag-geneva","tag-kane-county","tag-local-news","tag-road-work"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/117141791522748074","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}