'We Couldn't Be Shut Down Because This Is Major Revenue Stream For Us'

JOLIET — Ron Romero and the Illinois Rock & Roll Museum on Route 66 are making the best of their situation following Sunday morning’s microburst in downtown Joliet that caused part of the Joliet Junior College culinary arts building to damage the museum building near Cass and Chicago Streets.

To watch the entire Joliet Patch Facebook Live video with Ron Romero, you can find it at the very bottom of this story.

“When we got here, we realized there was a lot of damage from the museum … It was actually Joliet Junior College’s roof, which is about a half a block away and seven or eight stories tall,” Romero explained. “What had happened is that the wind picked up the roof, actually lifted it, and did damage to the parapet of the building.

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“The inside got a little bit wet, because there was damage to the roof and our friends from Adler Roofing came out immediately and patched that up so we didn’t have to worry about any more water coming in and ServPro of Joliet were there in 15 or 20 minutes and … they started cleaning up right away, too.

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“I was just in there today,” Romero reflected. “It’s dry inside. The good news about that is there no damage to any of the artifacts. There’s no damage to the interior of the building. A little bit of water, but there’s no damage at this point that we can tell … the significant part of the damage was the front of the building, the facade, the window area, the roof.”

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Fortunately, Romero stressed, the damage to his three-story museum was not a building collapse as the Joliet Fire Department initially feared.

For now, the rock & roll museum has opened a pop-up location near the museum at the University of St. Francis Art Gallery, at 25 East Van Buren Street, in downtown Joliet. Office hours are Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The museum’s office phone number remains the same at 815-927-1540.

“We want to say thank you to the community because everybody came together to help assist us, the mayor was here, city administrator was here, one of the city partners with the University of St. Francis had offered up the space that we’re in right now, which is their art gallery,” Romero explained. “It’s on the southeast side of the back end of the Rialto.

“We basically set up shop here so we can sell gifts. We figure we’re going to be here for a couple of weeks and then we’ll get back into the museum and be able to do business as normal there, if it even takes us that long, but we couldn’t be shut down because this is a major revenue stream for us and we ask everybody right now to please support us so we can keep paying our bills, our mortgage and our electric and everything else, but we’ll be back in the other building real soon, I think.”


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