I wasn’t looking for a revelation on a rural road in southeastern Illinois. But that’s what I found on the outskirts of Galatia, a small town where the tribulations of Appalachia likely drifted west and settled.
Instead of a burning bush in a biblical wilderness, it was an industrial 3D printer the size of a small garage. The machine, I learned, required a $1.1 million investment to arrive in Illinois and promised an affordable housing renaissance across the region known as Little Egypt.
And it called to me.
I drove by it over and over again. One year ago, in August 2024, this printer was at the center of a groundbreaking ceremony attended by over 100 people, including myself. I covered the event for the Illinois Capitol News and watched as the machines laid down the first layers of what was supposed to be a new beginning. Two local men have pledged to save Cairo, Illinois by using the machine to print new homes in a town that desperately needs them.
I watched state and local politicians ceremonially throw dirt. Those involved held up the machine to prove the arrival of a new era and posed for photos next to it. They promised fast, efficient, modern housing. And with that came the promise of a sense that finally someone was paying attention to this corner of the state.
But a year later, the printer had created exactly one double-sided frame, but the project was abandoned before the interior was completed. Cracks appeared in the wall before anyone moved in.
State and city officials will break ground on a 3D printing duplex project in Cairo, Illinois in August 2024. Julia Rendleman, Illinois, Capitol News Ryan Moore, then a Prestige employee, pointed to a crack in the duplex printing that appeared in December, which the company said was one of dozens that caused work stoppages. Prestige said it waited a year for its printer supplier to provide a crack repair plan. If that was not provided, the company used hydraulic cement. julia lendleman
I started investigating what was wrong and found the printer disassembled on a flatbed truck at a rural repair shop. There’s no need to advertise it because you either know it’s there or you don’t go in the first place.
The more I stared at it and drove by it, the more I wondered how something as big a promise as a house could be left to rust, exposed to the sun and rain. What did this abandoned printer have to say about the false promises so often made in the name of saving rural America? What about the officials who claim to be trying to help? And at its core, how did this extremely expensive modern technology get abandoned here in the first place?
After the 2024 Cairo Duplex Celebration, the 3D printers were parked at this rural repair shop in Galatia, and some of them remained outside on flatbed trailers for more than a year. julia lendleman
An investigation published in collaboration with ProPublica in collaboration with Illinois Capitol News sought answers to these questions. I followed what turned out to be one of the windiest and wildest reporting journeys of my life. I learned that a project to build 3D homes in Cairo was being driven by political connections behind the scenes. State Sen. Dale Fowler, whose district includes Cairo, helped introduce the 3D printing company to top leaders, including Gov. JB Pritzker and U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth’s office. Prestige Project Management, located in the same high-rise building in Harrisburg, Illinois, as the Fowler district office, has pitched the project as part of the state’s future housing.
A Pritzker spokesperson said the governor’s office took no action after meeting with Prestige. A Duckworth spokesperson said that when contacted by Fowler, the senator’s office had just resumed discussions about how to address Cairo’s housing crisis and that the office had no additional engagement with the company. Fowler has played an active role in promoting the company’s projects in Cairo, but said he only wanted to see housing development in the city and was otherwise not involved in Prestige’s business dealings.
What I thought would be a simple story turned out to be rather strange. Parts of it were Old Testament prophecies, and parts of it were strange Facebook rumors.
From left: Illinois Governor JB Pritzker poses for a photo with Harrisburg Mayor John McPeake and State Senator Dale Fowler. At a January 2024 meeting at Harrisburg City Hall, Fowler told the governor about Cairo’s 3D printing project. Courtesy of Harrisburg Mayor John McPeek
Within a few months of that groundbreaking party, we learned that construction on the duplex had stopped. Six employees left the company after Prestige’s owners said dozens of cracks had started appearing in the walls. Shortly thereafter, the FBI began an investigation into Prestige’s extensive business dealings. No charges or arrests have been made, and the owners say they are fully cooperating with investigators and have done nothing wrong. They also said the printer has since stopped working because the concrete “ink” that came with it was defective. Black Buffalo 3D, the printer’s supplier, said it offered Prestige a new, concrete solution and finding a buyer if Prestige no longer wanted the printer.
I spent months poring over records and speaking with Prestige’s owners, former employees, and others who did business with the company, trying to piece together a timeline of the company’s dealings in Cairo and beyond. Along the way, I encountered intense interviews, tearful moments, strange contradictions, and a swamp of rumors.
And I found myself drawn into the midst of it all. I whispered a prayer in my car, chased the truth like a storm rolling off the Shawnee River, loved this place with all my heart, and still wondered: What the hell happened here?
At the same time, in a way, maybe a part of me already knew what happened. The story of unfulfilled housing promises in Cairo is one I have written repeatedly for more than a decade.
McBride Place apartment complex being demolished in 2019 Molly Parker/The Southern Illinoisan
I’ve written about how mold, rats, lead-tainted water, and rot persisted for generations in the city’s public housing, where a quarter of the town once lived. I’ve written about misspending by public housing authorities, subsequent takeovers by the federal government, and long, painful efforts to tear down what they couldn’t salvage. For years, federal officials have promised to rebuild homes even as they are being demolished. They say the plan relies on private companies and innovation working with government agencies. From this perspective, something like a construction 3D printer seemed like a perfect fit for their vision.
So when Harrisburg’s Prestige Project Management, with the support of a state senator, offered to buy a printer and deliver it directly to Cairo, one of its owners said it was a mission from God, people believed.
What was the alternative?
What I learned in Cairo is that progress (and its illusions) comes with its own sadness. Within 10 years, public housing was demolished, hollowing out a town that was already on the brink of collapse. People had to choose between opportunities elsewhere and staying at home, between safer housing and the place that created them.
And the emotional weight of this story was not from the strangest events I encountered, but from the most real and heartbreaking ones. A town that had its hopes raised only to see them dashed once again. A mother who lives in a cramped one-bedroom unit across town dreams of moving into one of the two-bedroom units in a duplex so she can finally give her 6-year-old daughter her own space.
Kanisha Mallory, who shares a one-bedroom apartment with her 6-year-old daughter, wanted to move into the duplex. Julia Rendleman, ProPublica
I heard people say that some towns cannot be saved.
I understand the argument. I’ve felt it myself, driving the back roads of southern Illinois between two great rivers that meet in Cairo, through a landscape marked by poverty, abandonment, and a stubborn struggle to hang on. But to me, Cairo always seemed worth saving because of its history, suffering, and resilience. That word may seem too neat for what black people there endured: racism and exclusion that remained long after much of the South began to change.
Are unfinished 3D printed residential glasses really the best we have to offer?
I’ve written thousands of stories. Most disappear as soon as they are submitted. But some remains in the bones.
This is one of them.
