Walk down Main Street in Solon this week and something feels unfinished, even though most of the block looks the way it has for months. On one stretch, storefronts have quietly filled in over the past year and a half: a sushi counter that didn't exist a few years ago, an agricultural drone software company running out of a converted office space, an optometry practice that just got a ribbon cutting. A few doors away, at the corner of Main and Iowa, sits a building nobody can lease yet. It's the old fire station, next to the old City Hall, next to a stretch of vacant lots. The city put those parcels out for private redevelopment proposals in June, and the deadline for anyone who wanted to bid on them passed three days ago.
That gap says something real about how a small town actually fills in. Private storefronts move on their own schedule, one lease at a time. The block the city owns moves on a different one, shaped by procurement law, engineering surveys, and a council calendar. Right now, in August 2026, Solon has both processes running on the same three blocks, and only one of them has an answer.
The Block Everyone Walks Past
At its June 17 meeting, the Solon City Council approved Resolution 2627, formally launching a request for proposals for what the city calls the Solon City Centre Development Project. The RFP covers the 100 block of North Street between Iowa Street and Dubuque Street, the former Fire Station Building at 131 N. Iowa Street, and the former City Hall at 101 N. Iowa Street, according to the Solon Economist. All three sit inside downtown's oldest footprint, a short walk from the businesses that already draw foot traffic every day.
City Administrator Cami Rasmussen told the paper the RFP exists to communicate what the city wants to see built there, not just to collect bids. That framing matters because of how the properties were acquired. The city bought them using tax increment financing, and Iowa law requires a competitive redevelopment process for TIF-funded property rather than a private sale. City Engineer Dave Schechinger prepared boundary surveys, utility locations, and topographic data for the packet so that interested developers wouldn't have to pay for that groundwork themselves before submitting a proposal.
Developers who wanted in had to attend a mandatory pre-submittal meeting on July 21. Proposals were due to Solon City Hall, 100 S. Cedar Street, by 2 p.m. on Friday, August 7. Once those proposals are reviewed, the council said it will judge them on overall benefit to the community rather than simply picking the highest bidder. That standard means there's no promise of a quick answer. As of this week, nobody outside city hall knows what's actually on the table for that corner.
Two Storefronts That Didn't Wait
American Autonomy Inc. moved into an office at 300 East Main Street in February, trading its old identity as an equipment seller for something closer to a software company. CEO Mariah Scott told the Solon Economist the shift meant the company needed a different kind of workspace, and that Solon rose to the top of the list partly because CFO John Stromert already lived in town and recommended the space. The company builds platforms that plan and log agricultural drone flights, and its first outside partner, Exedy Drones, is set to fly on that software for the 2026 season.
The Solon Economic Development Group's own newsletter recorded a ribbon cutting for Vision Center P.C., held with the Greater Iowa City area chamber, and listed E&J Geothermal Inc. among the local businesses it's been highlighting on Main Street.
None of that required a city RFP. It required an owner who wanted a storefront and a landlord willing to sign a lease. That's the same path Uncle Sang's Sushi & Kitchen followed when it opened at 122 E. Main Street in 2023, becoming, by the Cedar Rapids Gazette's account, Solon's first sushi restaurant. The block already had Big Grove Brewery pouring at 101 W. Main Street and Bluebird Cafe at 112 E. Main Street. Sam's Main Street Market keeps handling the groceries and everyday errands that make a downtown functional on a Tuesday, not just during a festival weekend.
Here's the same information sorted by who made the decision, and how long it took:
| Already decided (private lease) | Still pending (city-owned) |
|---|---|
| American Autonomy Inc., 300 E. Main St. — opened February 2026 | Former City Hall, 101 N. Iowa St. |
| Vision Center P.C. — recent ribbon cutting with SEDG | Former Fire Station, 131 N. Iowa St. |
| Uncle Sang's Sushi & Kitchen, 122 E. Main St. — open since 2023 | Vacant lots, 100 block North St. |
| Big Grove Brewery, 101 W. Main St., and Bluebird Cafe, 112 E. Main St. | Status: proposals under council review as of August 2026 |
The Weekend That Proved the Model
Solon Beef Days ran July 17 and 18 this year, the same third weekend of July it has held for more than fifty years. The festival is volunteer-run and traces back to 1971. By its own accounting, it has awarded $966,450 to local projects and community improvements since then, and this year's committee approved $61,735 in new awards, going to:
- High school athletics
- The Scouts
- The Solon Recreation Department
- The Senior Support program
- DVIP/RVAP
- The Solon Public Library
"We support the schools, the city, the parks and rec programs, the Legion here in town, so that is why we do it, is to support the community," Denise Bruck, president of the festival, told the Solon Economist.
This year brought one visible change on the ground. Because of construction in the parking lot at Lakeview Elementary, both the 5K and the Fun Run finished at St. Mary's Catholic Church instead of their usual route, a small logistical shift that longtime residents would have noticed on race morning even if visitors never clocked it.
By Sunday, the street had already reset. "By noon Sunday, Main Street's back open, the carnival rides are gone, the tents are down, and you almost can't tell Beef Days even happened," Bruck said.
That's the pace a volunteer-run weekend can move at: raise tens of thousands of dollars, fund six organizations, and clear the street in under 24 hours. The block the city owns, a few hundred feet from where the bandstand stood, has been sitting empty far longer than that and still doesn't have an answer.
What Comes Next
The council will spend the coming weeks reviewing whatever proposals arrived by the August 7 deadline. Because the stated standard is overall community benefit rather than automatic selection of the top bid, there's no guarantee the process wraps up quickly. Residents who want to follow along can check agenda postings on the city's website or sit in on a council meeting at Solon City Hall.
For a sense of how long this kind of project can take from vision to finished block, consider the last time downtown Solon reinvented itself. The roughly $1 million Main Street project the city undertook in 2012 is the one Rasmussen still points back to. "That really set the tone for where Solon is today," she told Business View Magazine. That project involved years of planning before the visible work began. If the fire station block follows a similar arc, the empty side of Main Street may stay empty for a while yet, even as the leased side keeps filling in one storefront at a time.
Reading Main Street Honestly
The interesting thing about downtown Solon this month isn't that it's growing. It's that the growth is arriving at two different speeds on the same three blocks. A private tenant can sign a lease on a Tuesday and be serving customers by spring. The city, bound by TIF rules and a process built to protect the public's investment, is still working through what the block it owns will become. Both are the same downtown. They just don't move at the same pace.
If you've lived in Solon a while, you already know the corner. You've probably parked in the lot near the old fire station during Beef Days without giving much thought to who owns the building behind it. The next time you're walking past, it might be worth a second look. Whatever the council eventually decides will likely reshape more of Main Street's daily rhythm than any single new restaurant has this year.
Blank and McCune, The Real Estate Company has been part of the Iowa City metro, Solon included, since 1979, and we like knowing not just who's selling a house but who's opening a storefront two doors down. If a changing downtown ever has you wondering what it means for property nearby, our team is happy to talk through what we're seeing on the ground.
