MONTICELLO, Ill. (WCIA) — Monticello is investing in local small businesses, and the City said it’s paying off.

Monticello has been hosting small business training sessions at no cost to participants for years. Now officials said they’ve gone from around 70% of retail space not being used to only one building sitting empty.

Plenty of people want to own their own business — but where do you start? The City of Monticello’s Economic Development Office said they’re here to help with their small business bootcamp program.

“I think it was definitely beneficial,” Sage City Market owner Wes Hornback said.

Monticello officials said the City is filled with thriving small businesses. But it hasn’t always been this way.

“Three or four years ago, we had a 30 to 40% occupancy rate in first floor retail space in our downtown,” Director of Community and Economic Development Callie McFarland said. “We have one empty building right now.”

She credits part of this growth to the Monticello Bootcamp program.

“It’s kind of a five-week snapshot of all things that people should be thinking of when they run a business,” McFarland said.

The program has been going on for ten years now. Many of the businesses in Monticello have been through it.

“Going from just a small little business or a hobby type thing to a legit business, there’s a lot of things that you don’t think about,” Hornback said.

At Sage City Market, you can get farm fresh produce and meats. Hornback said they made the transition a little more than a year ago moving from going to farmer’s markets – to having a physical location.

“Going through the bootcamp really helped open up our eyes to all of those little things and be able to really develop a plan and an approach to, you know, get to open,” Hornback said.

But, Hornback said it’s not just the knowledge that’s valuable — it’s also the network you create. And with the new tools he learned — Sage City is having success.

“So far have been very happy with how everything is going,” Hornback said. “We keep growing every month, which is really the goal and what I want to do.”

And Monticello is too. McFarland said this growth has been great for the rural community.