Champaign-Urbana - Silicon Prairie slowly coming of age
By MICHAEL HOWIE
News-Gazette City Editor

   This is a company town.
   The company happens to be the government.
   Whether local, state or federal, the public payroll accounts for about seven of every 20 jobs in Champaign County. That's meant a fairly stable economy over the years.
   But there are other big players, and some serious changes taking place, too. Public-sector employment actually dropped a little between 1990 and 1998.
   Health care is a huge part of the picture, and a retail boom that started in the 1990s left businesses often scrambling to find workers. It may come as a surprise to some that the county has more than 11,000 manufacturing workers.
   The new century finds East Central Illinois attractive to development, and several projects are on the way. There'll be huge changes on the southern part of the University of Illinois campus that could create a long-talked-about Silicon Prairie.
   There have been enormous economic realignments: Rantoul lost an Air Force base, and Danville lost a foundry that had helped define the city.
   Meanwhile, some longtime businesses, like the giant Kraft plant on Champaign's west side, keep going.