Macombopoly takes the game that our own Lizzie Magie invented and transforms our entire downtown square, which is a million square feet into an adventure like you've never had playing monopoly.

It is immersive.

It is instructing.

It has trivia.

It has ways to win.

It has beautiful art involved with it.

And you get to do all of this in a town that looks like it's from back to the future.

It's going to be an experience that people won't forget, and they'll want to do it over and over again.

This is something that I didn't know about.

I grew up here.

Never, never knew this never was taught it.

and I think a lot of the townspeople didn't know either.

It was just something that was forgotten in history.

And at that time, a good, good friend of ours who had grown up here and left had come back and opened a game store.

And my brother and I were talking to him about this, and we got to talking about how a wow would be cool to do something in Macomb again.

I'm not in this office yet, but we had come back and it was my brother who first said, boy.

Isn't it remarkable how our downtown square kind of looks like a monopoly board, and how, coincidentally, in one of the corners at one time was our jail?

that really got a lot of us thinking, you know, I mean, for a long time, you thought, you know, at this downtown square could be like a game board.

A game board in which Lizzie Magie actually invented.

She invented that style of going around a game board like that infinitely.

Nobody had done that prior to to Lizzie, And that's when we all kind of went, wow, that's that's kind of it.

Right?

So Adam Kozlowski did do his best to try to get something going, but it was nearly impossible to, get something together, he was an actor that got back into the business and started touring again, and it kind of faded away But I came back to Macomb and I thought we you know what?

We got to give this another shot because we this is something that could really set this area aside and make it something that's very unique.

And that's when the whole story started with us learning about Lizzie and, that was about six years ago.

so I'm Jock Hedblade, I'm the executive director of visit Unforgettable Forgottonia, we do business as Macomb Area Convention and Visitors Bureau.

And, we are the folks behind this Macombopoly project.

Jan Armstrong, I'm my title is assistant director of the convention and Visitors Bureau.

I mean, there's two of us, and we do whatever needs to be done.

It's been very exciting.

I mean, I grew up in Macomb I had no idea that Lizzie Magie, the inventor of monopoly, was born here.

So that whole story has just been wonderful, wonderful to develop and it's just something exciting happening every day.

It seems like, you know, that we learn a little bit more about her, and learning of all the stories that, have been written about her.

There's something that comes out that seems like every day.

I couldn't have done it without Jan Armstrong.

She is the backbone of our office, and she's fantastic in every.

My name is Allen Nemec.

And I am with the Macombopoly committee, with the Macomb Area Convention and Visitors Bureau.

I am a local, historian on the aspect of Lizzie Magie, and I am also a genealogist.

The Magies settled in the area.

they eventually bought a home here in Macomb in the early 1860s James K purchased several different newspapers.

He would sell them.

he eventually bought the McComb Journal.

At the time, it wasn't called that, but he's responsible for changing the name to the McComb Journal newspaper.

and not only being the editor of the paper, he eventually sold it and became the Macomb Postmaster and shortly thereafter on May 9th of 1866. gave birth to Elizabeth J. Magie You know, Macomb in 1866, would have been just post-Civil War, though, no real reconstruction would have been happening here, our downtown square, you would recognize it from 1866 to now, right?

I mean, we've got paved streets and that stuff.

Now, some of the businesses have changed, but the square and the downtown, and, courthouse in the middle of that square is, is is how it is today.

So I think that if you brought somebody back or Lizzie, Lizzie, back to this area today, I don't think that they would be, you know, their bearings would be too far off.

They'd recognize the downtown.

Macomb is a quiet, quaint town brimming with history in the west central fields of Illinois.

One hour in any direction from any major cities.

As the corn grows, becomes remoteness has created an extraordinary community spirit.

The community has been amazing about this.

You know, we started this project six years ago as part of a three phase plan to, bring tourism to this area.

and part of that plan was to start with with murals, then move to, become a, Abraham Lincoln National Heritage Area with looking for Lincoln tours and then to bring this complete to light.

and when we started talking about this, there was interested in all of these things, but I think monopoly was the thing that people were most excited about.

We put up signs very early, coming into the entrances of Macomb to let people know that this was the birthplace of Lizzie Magie, the woman who invented monopoly.

That was for people that were visitors people that were just touring the area to find out.

Well, it turns out it actually enlightened a tremendous amount of our community itself.

And once people started seeing that, people really started getting excited about the project.

And I think excited just because they felt proud of the fact that this person had come from Macomb and invented a game that is arguably the most popular game in the world.

It's universally known.

you know, so many local people that will just think we just live in a little town, that nothing happens.

This is an exciting story, and we should be proud of our heritage.

And this Lizzie Magie is a real important part of that.

right now, you know, we've got a whole display of the games that she had invented downtown in the bank, right along the board game where you play, we've got the statue, and that stuff will always have Lizzie Day on May 9th.

we have other plans down the road that we we wish to do.

expanding the game, expanding of our story of Lizzie.

My name is Justin Bougher I am, attorney here in Macomb, Illinois.

I've been here for about 13 years.

and I run my own law firm here.

early on, there were some legal issues that had come up.

questions on how to proceed, copyright law, things like that.

So I kind of got involved unofficially and then took a larger role once I joined the board.

Hi.

My name is Michael Inman.

I'm the mayor of Macomb Illinois.

I think this whole idea started percolating further rapidly once some of the background became aware.

And we have such, a really neat history with this, this game piece.

And, and when they came to us, it was a little bit overwhelming initially.

you know, the idea that Lizzie Magie, who I had, had no idea who was unfortunately, before, this conversation started or the the history behind The Landlord's Game.

all I know is that when I was young, I play monopoly all the time.

seems like summers were filled with outdoor activities in the day and at night.

marathon, monopoly, games.

But never realizing this history was in Macomb.

So I had never heard of Lizzie Magie.

And then when I first became a member of the MACVB, we were working on a project to put an installation up of the original Landlord's Game and that's when I originally learned of her, and we were planning some potential murals and that sort of thing.

And then once I became president of the board and took a more active role in the monopoly stuff, I learned a lot more about her.

So before joining the MACVB, though, I had not heard of her.

My name is Kelly Kniewel and I'm the director of partnerships of eATLAS.

And on this project, I'm coordinating with Unforgettable Forgottonia and the city of Macomb as well as for businesses here in Macomb.

And my name is Jon Matuzak I'm the president of eATLAS.

My role is primarily to coordinate the technology effort involved with the the actual engineers and technology side, the animation folks, and make sure that the end result is what Jock and Unforgettable Forgottonia were looking for.

We're well on our way.

eATLAS started in 2016.

Our two co-founders, Ed Kahn and Matt Socall decided they wanted to get people off the couch and into the real world.

And they thought a treasure hunt might be the way to do it.

so it started about a year ago.

We partnered with Unforgettable Forgottonia to work on, looking for Lincoln Adventure in Macomb.

And so there's a scavenger hunt looking for where Abe Lincoln touched in the city of Macomb.

And we also now have a mural tour.

And then when this prospect of the Macomb game was broached, I helped, sort of smooth the way, with our board and got them to back it.

And they've been working with, the folks down in Macomb ever since.

in terms of how the collaboration actually works, it's taken the form of weekly meetings that go from at least an hour or sometimes two hours every week since at least September, like, let's say, Labor Day of 2023.

But the key word really is collaboration.

we couldn't have come up with this idea, so we couldn't have funded it ourselves.

and that that sort of circle of partnership, if you will, is extending now to the merchants.

Kelly is leading that effort.

But, we're trying to get as many of the merchants involved in local business as we can.

So my name is Sean.

I am the brewer and one of the co-founders here at Forgottonia Brewing in Macomb, Illinois.

we decided to participate in this game.

there's another game here in Macomb.

It is a self-guided tour which is looking for Lincoln.

and we are part of that game as well.

So it was a natural transition into, participating in this one as well.

James K. Magie, Lizzie's father, was instrumental in not only the newspaper but politics.

we know that he was a, a great supporter of Abraham Lincoln and the Union cause to the fact that he actually enlisted and, was in the Union Army to be there to report back about it.

So what we can guess from from from James K Magie is that he was a progressive person, and clearly believed in people thinking for themselves.

Throughout her early life, Lizzie and her family moved frequently.

Moving first to Canton, Illinois.

And then to Springfield, Illinois when Lizzie was around eight years old.

A number of years later, her family moved to Chicago.

And Lizzie moved out around age 18.

Lizzie moved with their family back to Springfield, Illinois in 1886, when she was 20.

A few years later, they moved to Duluth, Minnesota.

And in 1898, Lizzie ultimately moved to Washington, D.C..

In 1892, She publishes poems called My Betrothed and Other Poems.

at age 26, To the egotist.

Think of this earth, this great revolving glob that whirls along its boundless path through the immensity of space.

Think of the multitude of stars that dot the midnight sky.

Think of the myriads more beyond That baffles man's conception.

Think of a million suns and more vast orbs of living fire.

Think of this endless wilderness of worlds, the universe.

And what are you?

I am an atom in the universe.

I am composed of myriads of atoms that are each composed of countless atoms.

More.

I am moving, breathing, living, human being, I am I. I see, I hear, I feel, I speak.

I think of this vast wilderness of worlds, the universe, and the thought affords me pleasure.

Can it think of me?

and it was shortly thereafter, in the year of 1893, that Lizzie's father died, and I think it had a big impact on her life because her father made sure she was a well-educated woman.

And, Lizzie clearly took that advice in that teaching, and she ran with it and, became a very successful woman.

She was a feminist.

She believed in education, and she believed that women should be equal to men and should earn the same as men for doing the same kind of work.

later in 1893 She was responsible for creating a typewriter feed, so that it was easy to put paper into a typewriter.

And she was smart enough for a woman of that era to actually fill out the paperwork, to do a patent and get it for herself.

In 1903, Lizzie starts to put together the patent for a game she created called The Landlord's Game, the precursor to monopoly, and in 1904, she actually receives the patent for her game, and starts to self-publish her game, which again for a woman of age 38, is pretty remarkable, had Lizzie not gone out and gotten a patent, which at the time, less than 1% of women had patents, had she not won out and gotten that, we wouldn't be sitting here having this conversation today because she would have been lost to history.

During the 19th century, an economist named Henry George touted the belief that land and natural resources should not belong to individuals, but rather to society as a whole, Because of this, anyone owning land should pay taxes on it.

George also believed that people should own completely what they create themselves, and therefore should not be taxed for labor or the like, George termed this belief system as the single tax theory.

Lizzie wholeheartedly agreed with Henry George's ideas and often taught people about his single tax theory.

But in a desire to reach a wider audience, she looked for other avenues of educating.

this philosophy, these thoughts were extremely popular at that time with many people.

And, Lizzie was introduced to Henry George through her father, James K Magie she developed this game to design, to show the perils of monopolies.

you know, we came into this thing saying, hey, let's do something where we can kind of exploit the whole idea about this, game being invented by a woman that was born here and as we move through this and learn more and more about her, really much of our story now is about telling what kind of a woman she was, what type of a person she was, what she did and what she accomplished.

So it's been kind of twofold, and it's been really, it's opened my mind up, to so much.

And it makes us so proud that that Lizzie's actually actually, from here.

Lizzie created this game.

We think by herself.

She conceptualized this and and put it all together.

And we have a whole team of people locally here in Macomb that's working on it.

We have our team.

We have developers, animators, designers, voice actors.

there's a lot of people that are involved in this, lot of moving parts.

I mean, just the folks doing the engineering.

There's a team of seven doing that.

two people working on animation.

You know, it's a lot of moving parts.

it's our first time doing a rendition of what I would refer to as, board game.

We, we we do a lot of game type activities through tours and scavenger hunts.

but this is the first time doing something like this.

Yeah, and we're just trying to make it fun where we want, along with, you know, our partners here at Unforgettable.

Forgottonia, we want to bring visitors to Macomb.

We want them to have fun while they're they're here.

We wanted to make it a memorable experience.

And we think gamifying, the existing eATLAS app and using it to to host what we think will ultimately be the world's largest board game is, a fun way to do it.

it's like any project, right?

You have to have some, a project scope on the front end, sort of.

What are the features do you want, do you want the dice to roll?

Do you want the cards, to pair with for winning money?

Do you want to have a leaderboard which shows who's in first place?

all of those intricacies have to be conceived and then, determined whether they can actually be incorporate in the game, and then they have to be converted into actual code or into an actual animation, and all of that has to be integrated.

It moves from concept to design to development.

And then to fun.

this is, a project that's been six years in the making.

So, it's been everything, you know, from conceptualizing what it is.

Exactly.

Macomb is going to be to, you know, working on the app and helping create that.

We we've our office has been in every step in every hour of of producing this, along with our partners at eATLAS who have been unbelievable in creating this, this game for us.

but the partners here in town and, it is it.

I can't even begin to tell you what it takes a two person office.

in doing what you what you have to do to bring this together.

when we need to put together a mural here in this town, you know, we can call a few people, we can have an idea and we can get a mural put together and put up in three months.

This a project like this takes everybody's cooperation in the community, the county, as we are the county seat and the city and all of these other people, that help us create what we're trying to do, MasterPiece Customs and and and Gabe, and the beautiful work that they've done.

I mean, we've been so lucky that not only we were able to, bring this this this, project home, but the talented people that we were able to a resource and get to work on it, we couldn't have been.

We couldn't have been luckier.

*unintelligible talking * *unintelligible talking * *unintelligible talking * right now we're in, Gabe Stevens shop where he's creating our, our sculptures that are going to go on the four corners of the downtown square.

he's been working on these now for over probably the better part of four months now.

and we're getting close to the end because we're about two months away, just shy of two months away of, unveiling this.

my name is Gabe Stevens.

The company is MasterPiece Customs.

We are a monument builder.

We've been in business about four years.

Overall, I've been doing artwork for about ten.

that's on the top of 25 years experience as a welder.

this has been in the making a couple of years.

we collaborated, got together, found out the pieces that they want.

really found their direction, what they wanted them to look like.

And Meeting after meeting and approval.

Prints and drawings and where we're at now.

will start with the dice that will be on the southwest corner of the square.

the dice would be three foot cubes.

mounted on a ten foot post and they are precariously mounted with bearings so that each of the dice can spin independently.

I found food grade, industrial thickness mixing bowls.

And that's what I used for all the pips which are the indentations?

to help save time.

Worked out great.

now, moving to the southeast corner is the top hat.

We did not want to stick with the look of the monopoly game.

Top hat.

They wanted to follow Abraham Lincoln's version of it, so it's more of a stovepipe.

The next one would be the game board that we have.

It's flipped upside.

So one side is monopoly, the other side is landlord.

And then on the opposite side is the opposing sides of top and bottom The follow up would be the Lizzie sculpture.

she is all out of eighth inch thick stainless steel material.

the hardest one to do with the most hours wrapped into it.

But the most fun of all of them, I think, is, is this one, there are very few pictures of Lizzie.

I think there's 6 to 8 total.

Luckily, there is left right, sides, front.

grabbing a 3D image out of there is a little bit difficult.

But luckily nobody is really acquainted with how she looks, so nobody's going to be able to really say that's not her.

But we're we're getting it very close to the pictures.

we did take an easy route.

I bought a mannequin that had the profile that we needed to mimic.

So we hand-cut each piece to form around the mannequin, which saved a lot of time getting the geometry correct and, then after we cover the entire mannequin with metal, then I split the piece apart and then take out the mannequin and then put it back together again.

And that's where we're at right now.

We just taking the mannequin out.

a couple weeks ago.

they wanted to make sure that we didn't cut any corners on Lizzie because the other parts are for the game.

But the sculpture of her was important because of the recognition that we're trying to give her that the past didn't give her the phrase starving artist is kind of a real thing.

It's hard to get work, and we greatly appreciate that we were picked for this job.

he came well, recommended from, another sculpture named Duke Ousler, who's a, a local, artists that, is fantastic at what he does, but she looks great.

I mean, she looks great already.

She's not even close to being finished.

I mean, there's so much more her that needs to be, you know, sanded down and smoothed out.

But you can see what she's going to look like.

And, I think she's she's going to look great.

By 1907, Lizzie takes out a newspaper ad.

She's still single at this point, at the age of 41.

Lizzie was a very independent woman, but a lot of that, I think, was instilled in her.

Or certainly the permission was given for her through her father, which is another one of those things that I don't think, happened a lot back then.

She puts an ad in the paper, and she says that she is going to auction herself off as a white slave.

For sale to highest bidder.

Young woman.

American slave.

Intelligent.

Educated.

Refined.

True.

Honest.

Just.

Poetical.

Philosophical.

Broad minded and big souled and womanly.

Above all things.

Brunette.

Large, Gray-Green eyes.

Full passionate lips.

Splendid teeth.

Not beautiful, but very attractive.

Features.

Full of character and strength, yet truly feminine.

Height five feet three inches.

Well proportioned.

Graceful, supple.

Age.

Well, she isn't very old, but she wasn't born yesterday.

this is at a time when, when Lizzie was, was working as a secretary, and really was, displeased with, dispersing, salaries at the time.

And, what they had to do to, to make a living.

So she kind of tongue in cheek, but saying that, you know, she's available for sale as a slave, for businesses for her to come and work.

She does this not as a serious gesture, But she wanted to show the atrocities of unequal pay for women.

That the world wasn't equal for women at that particular time.

the newspaper ad, I think was taken out in a, in a New York paper.

But it actually the story about that got picked up across the country and it made, made quite a bit of, sensation, when it was reprinted in that stuff and people getting that story out there.

for a woman, it would be sort of scandalous to be putting an ad out to auction yourself off.

but Lizzie is sort of a, practical joker.

She loves amusements.

She was an actress as well, you know, so she really got into the playing a role here.

Lizzie was very clever about trying to get an idea across through either, you know, humor or shock or in the case of the game, monopoly, her trying to teach these Henry George theories about how monopolies were bad and not good for the general public.

within the game, there will be video clips, photos and audio clips that will help to tell the story.

besides, there will be text there also to to talk about the history and tell the story.

So it's a fun way of learning and moving through the game that the board game doesn't have.

you pick a token, you roll the dice, you collect money.

when you go past for got Tonia, you go to jail, you have, cards that you receive which either grant your money or take money away.

And then we've, we've taken the liberty to add some really fun elements to like when you play as a team, you can have a team name and, there's a leaderboard.

So you can compare how you're doing in the game against other people.

And one of the things I like a lot are the photo objective.

So you might be tasked to find something and take a selfie with it.

And you can also share those to social media.

So there'll be an elements, that will involve social media and sharing those photos so some of the ways that you can win are by spending some time, with family and friends, learning new things that you didn't know before, doing things that you never did before or experienced before.

that's all true.

I mean, that's where the fun really comes from, not from the money.

Yeah.

And then also you can win prizes too.

So the local businesses have been getting involved and there will be ways to win either small physical prizes or tokens of the game.

or it's, it might be like a discount at a local store or restaurant.

I really look forward to May 9th and the weeks and months following, and make this success because if Jock and his crew are happy, we've done our job, and it would be a significant accomplishment for us.

And and so I'm, I'm very optimistic.

be shocked if someone who played the monopoly game didn't recognize it as a variation of of the original, which is The Landlord's Game.

Yeah, yeah, you're surely the landlord.

Yeah.

Lizzie then by 1910, finally meets the love of her life, an elderly man, Albert Wallace Phillips, and they marry on October 27th of 1910, in Chicago.

Little is known between 1910 to 1924, but by 1924 Lizzie is living in Washington, DC.

one of the things that happened in 1921 was her original patent for The Landlord's Game expired, and she didn't renew it.

When it expires, it becomes public domain, so everybody could basically create their own game.

without any recourse.

you know, games in that stuff weren't necessarily mass produced and even the amount of games were out there, they were they were not affordable for a lot of people.

They were a bit of a luxury.

So if somebody was fortunate enough to go to somebody's house where they had one of these games, oftentimes, rather than even being able to get to a store that might have them, people would draw their own games up.

they would they would make their own game based on Lizzie's game.

And from there, the game kind of morphed into because it was about monopoly, kind of morphed into the name of monopoly.

And that's how we got to the game that we had today.

Interesting story.

Just just this past week, a local person here came up to me and said that right here in Macomb back in the 30s, this gentleman's family had created their own monopoly game.

They had taken the backs of, these, political posters, taped them together, and then draw drew out a game that had local businesses around here, and they still have the game.

And they he remembers them playing it for years and years and years and years.

So what a crazy thing that we find that they're actually doing that same thing right here in Macomb back in the 30s where they were buying the game.

And again, it was because it was at a time they didn't they didn't have the money.

It was a luxury to buy a board game.

So that's how they did it.

But they played it often.

By 1924, Lizzie decides to improve her landlord's game and puts out a patent for a new game.

which could be played two ways.

One, was to give all the money into, a pot so that people who needed money for welfare and things of that nature had it to help people along.

The other as we know it today, as a monopolistic game in which you're trying to buy all the properties and own them and charge rent.

And then that was the game, that Charles Darrow discovered and then decided to appropriate because it was the depression, and he needed some ways to make some money He created a rulebook, produced proper game boards with new illustrations, and offered to sell the game to Parker Brothers, who originally declined his offer.

Darrow then turned to selling his game and shopping centers, and after major success, Parker Brothers sent their decision to Darrow and offered to buy monopoly.

Upon Parker Brothers having it, they discovered that lo and behold, Lizzie already had a patent, both in 1904 and 1924.

So they approached Lizzie and offered to buy her patent.

They paid Lizzie $500 for her Landlord's Game, where they had paid Charles Darrow millions of dollars with the residuals Lizzie got a little bit upset later on when she was only paid $500, even though they did make promise they'd publish her other games.

But by 1937, after her husband had passed away, she put out a newspaper article saying how shameful it was of Darrow to plagiarize her game and the treatment that she received from Parker Brothers.

Lizzie had hoped that the monopoly aspect with children playing it, they would learn the evils of monopolies Little does she know that monopoly with the current version was a true monopolistic game.

to be honest, I haven't sat down and played the The Landlord's Game.

I'll tell you why.

It's very hard to find an original version of that game.

They if they exist, collectors have them.

We have a version of the game that Parker Brothers rebranded after they made their deal with Lizzie called The Landlord's Game, but they completely changed the way that that board looked so it wouldn't compete with monopoly.

So it almost looks like a Chutes and Ladders or a Game of Life type of a game board.

So you would play that a lot differently than you would play the original.

But I haven't had the the good fortune of playing her game, but I would love to someday.

I think the story's important.

I don't really think this story's important.

I know it's important.

it's important because of the woman that Lizzie Magie was.

She wasn't your typical young lady of the Victorian era.

She was completely, the opposite of that.

She was a trailblazer.

She is the type of woman that, you know, was a feminist before there was such a word.

And, you know, we can thank people like Lizzie, for the society that we're living in today and where women certainly will argue that there's a long way to go, but they've come an incredible, way.

And so, you know, Lizzie story is one that really needs to be told, not just because she invented monopoly, that the game that would become monopoly, because that's that's important.

But that's the hook.

When you get past that and you see the other things that this woman did in her lifetime as an artist, as a poet, as an inventor, as a feminist, as, as, a person that cared about people and their lives and having a better, richer life and a better society.

It's kind of amazing to me that it hasn't, hasn't, hasn't been told already that this got got buried.

she was a woman, who didn't get credit for her creation until much later, many decades later, both financially and even, you know, written in the halls of history.

So I think it's great that we're talking about that now.

And hopefully other, young women can be inspired by her as an inventor.

One more thing I would like to add on that is that a lot of the concepts that she based the game around are still concepts that we're talking about today.

it's such an important story to tell that goes beyond Macomb, McDonough County and unforgettable.

Forgottonia.

It's it's this is a story for everyone.

and, we're just proud to be able to be here and and be able to tell that story.

Lizzie eventually was treated for heart disease in 1947, and it eventually died in 1948.

On March 2nd.

And that is the story of Lizzie Magie and her quick life.

I truly believe that Lizzie Magie was a fascinating person.

she really wanted to make a life that was meaningful for her.

she sought out to be an equal to men.

being a genealogist and interested in the Magie family.

I set out to look for one of Lizzie's direct descendants I actually found on Ancestry.com somebody who was a name match to one of Lizzie's relatives, and they were doing the history on a Magie family.

I decided to reach out through Ancestry.com to Erin Anderson, who is the great great grandniece of Lizzy Magie.

Her great great grandmother was Lizzie's sister, Alta, you know, our job in this office and why we created this is to draw tourism and visitor dollars into the area.

Unforgettable Forgottonia McDonough County, Macomb, Illinois is a remarkable, beautiful place to go to.

but we needed a bait that hook a little bit, and we needed to have something that people could come to year round.

so what we hope is that this draws people from around the region, around the country, around the world.

To Macomb.

And I think that Macombopoly can only help in us moving that that forward.

We want there to be something that our town has is kind of a staple.

We do think it can draw visitors.

It can draw future business.

And we're hoping that this is kind of the first step towards really creating some significant tourism and economic gains for our town.

we have a long history of embracing all things historic about Macomb.

And, you know, you often hear this, this small bit of information about this community and why you should visit there.

But, you know, monopoly's a pretty big deal.

the idea that this is one more thing that someone could come to Macomb and interact with, And while they're here, they learn some history, they get to have some fun.

And at the end of the day, they're stimulating our economy when they may not have otherwise had any reason to come see us here in Macomb Great opportunity really hoping that people will enjoy this.

I think it's something different.

It's something not every community has.

Something that the whole town could be proud of.

It's been really inspiring to see the response we've gotten from the community.

You know, obviously, myself and the rest of the board and the people involved have been excited for a long time because it's something we're directly involved in.

But I was surprised to see just how enthusiastic the entire community really is about this.

We've had a lot of interest, a lot of phone calls, and people are pretty excited about it.

So that's really good to see.

I think the people taking pride in Macomb and this story is really important.

And then, you know, with my age, I've never played a lot of video games, but I have played that and it seems very it seems fun, you know, and not only that, people are learning, a lot of information about Macomb and Lizzie Magie.

So we are optimistic about the potential of this, game affecting us positively, and the surrounding area.

And quite honestly, anything that can bring more people to the small town we think is a good thing.

I'm hoping that Macomb embraces Lizzie and eventually plays the game on the downtown square, Because monopoly is truly a fun and exciting game.

anyone looking for a good day trip, if you're anywhere from Quincy to Chicago.

two blocks away from the Amtrak station.

is the downtown square to play the game.

It's, It's really kind of surreal that this is actually happening right now.

Happy Birthday, Lizzie.

I'm going to say something in Jocks to kill me, but I just want to thank Jock for his guidance over the last six years of making this all happen.

But one of the persons that has been driving this from day one, six years ago in my office with an idea.

Mr. Allen Nemec thank you all.

We're here And, you know, Lizzie is one to many people that you know that Macomb has to be proud of.

And she's a wonderful example of persistence.

And, you know, believing in yourself and I.

This event has been better than I could have imagined I can't thank them enough for seeking me out and inviting me here.

And I have had nothing but a positive experience since being here.

I think this is going to be a great opportunity for business to not only come to Illinois, but stop and become engaged and download the app and then also, I do a real life, size gathering right here in downtown Macomb on the square.

I feel really inspired here today by both Lizzie and this community.

Lizzy was a student entrepreneur, political activist, feminist, poet, inventor, entertainer, cracker Jack, typewriter reporter, marketing, stunt-ress a genius and a dreamer.

We would not be here today if Lizzie had not been inspired to create The Landlord's Game.

And then just in the last ten years, if you do a Google of Lizzie Magie it's all over and she's starting to get the recognition that she deserves.

In a world where it was imperfect she questioned the status quo and how to make things better for the greater good and I'm really excited to help show the world what Macomb has to offer.