Someone is finally filling the vacancy left by J.C. Penny.

It's probably never going to get back to its heyday when it had two movie theaters, an Olga's, and a video arcade (I can't remember what that was called. Tilt was at North Towne, Aladdin's Castle was at Cherry Vale. Was it the Electronic Experience? That doesn't sound right. Anyway...) but it's nice to see the space be used by someone.

That someone is PCI Pharma Services.

RRStar - The pharmaceutical services company, which employs about 1,700 people in the Rockford area, will lease 64,265 square feet of the former department store for warehousing and storage of pharmaceutical packaging materials. The company will hire 20 people for the Machesney Park operation.

So on top of bringing some business to Machesney Park they also will be bringing some jobs to the area.

The five-year lease will bring in about $820,000 to the village. The company plans on doing some minor renovations before moving in sometime this fall.

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