68 Business View Magazine - July 2016
underutilized,” she begins. “Our creek has a very sce-
nic name. It’s the Boneyard Creek.” Boneyard Creek
is a 3.3-mile-long waterway that drains much of twin
cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is a tributary of the
Saline Branch of the Salt Fork Vermilion River, which,
itself, is a tributary of the south-flowing Vermilion River
and the Wabash River. There are conflicting stories of
how the creek got its name, none of which have ever
been confirmed. But in University of Illinois lore, the
name “Boneyard” comes from the remains of poor stu-
dents who couldn’t hack it in the school’s tough engi-
neering curriculum.
Tyler says that the city invested redevelopment funds
into a key stretch of Boneyard Creek to make it a park.
“We pulled back the banks; we added public art el-
ements that resonated with the local ecology of the
creek. We made use of an historic railroad trestle
bridge that is now a pedestrian bridge. It’s a beautiful
place,” she says, emphatically.
And now that the creek park has been made more us-
able and attractive, economic development has fol-
lowed. “What we’ve seen since we opened it is invest-
ment for the commercial buildings alongside the new
park,” she observes. “We have very nice restaurants
along the banks with expanded decks overlooking the
creek. There are plans for a brewery downtown, and
we have another project that will be a market for mul-
tiple users.”
The park is now also used for community events. “We
have these great festivals,” Tyler says. “A few weeks
back we had our Boneyard Arts Festival and we held
a celebration at our new park with music and food
trucks.” The yearly Boneyard Arts Festival is a county-
wide celebration that takes place over four days in over
90 different venues across Champaign County, and
features the work of hundreds of fine and performing
artists. Sculptors, weavers, painters, photographers,
and other visual artists join musicians, actors, danc-
