* The Illinois Times last year…

He tools around town in a pickup truck with the license plate “Rabbi R.” He has bought several downtown buildings and is transforming them into retail, entertainment and living spaces. He’s going to bring actual World War II tanks to town and have them fire off a few rounds. He’ll even officiate at a wedding from time to time.

Just who is this man who has in a very short time left an indelible mark on the Jacksonville community?

Meet Rabbi Rob Thomas, 57, a native son of Jacksonville who has returned to his hometown with a mission as bold as the rumbling tanks he likes to drive in his spare time. That mission is to address two chief concerns among current community leaders – the need for more housing and entertainment opportunities. […]

Thomas, an ordained rabbi, is practicing what he preaches with the purchase and rehabilitation of four downtown Jacksonville buildings. The former Kresge Store building on the southeast corner of the square now houses Pizza Records, a retail and entertainment establishment, on the ground floor with two apartments being developed above. A similar plan with retail, restaurant or entertainment establishments below and residential units above is underway for the Andre & Andre Building, formerly the site of Sears; the former Osco Building known locally as the “green monster” and a red brick corner building at 201 E. Morgan St.

“This is the sort of thing that feeds on itself,” Thomas said. “You’ve got a critical mass of people living on the square; therefore, the square needs services for them of every type.”

* The governor was in Jacksonville earlier this week to award the city a $2 million downtown development grant. Pritzker has also included funding in his budget to tear down the abandoned Jacksonville Developmental Center. Rabbi Thomas attended the event and Rich talked to him about his downtown revitalization project…

Rich: How much longer do you think it’s going to be before this task is complete?

Rabbi Thomas: Oh, It’ll never be done. As it says in the Talmud ‘It is not for us to desist from the work, neither are we expected to complete it.’

Rich: Do you have a ballpark of how much you put in?

Thomas: I know an exact figure.

Rich: Can I ask you to tell me what that is?

Thomas: It’s a lot more than you think. […]

Rich: Do you really feel that Jacksonville is going to be back?

Thomas: Since COVID, you can work anywhere. Here’s the key bit of infrastructure you need, high capacity internet. So in the back of that Andre & Andre building (Thomas pointed across the square) is more fiber than you can get in downtown Chicago or downtown Manhattan. I dragged it all in there. And in the back of that building is Google, Netflix, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, I could keep going. I brought them all in.

Rich: So do they have servers over there?

Thomas: Yeah, I’ve got a network Point of Presence (PoP) […] And that connects all over the world to bring in that connectivity. So if you come here and you’ve got a tech or technical business. I need 1,000 lane highway but I need to be 10 feet long anywhere I want to go? Jacksonville. At a much lover cost of living, much more pleasant in may ways.

Rich: You can get a really nice house here.

Thomas: That’s exactly right. So you don’t have to go to Manhattan or Chicago. Come here, buy a lovely home. Maybe you want to fix up a home […] Maybe you want to move into a home. We’ve got options.

* You can kind of see the governor amidst the crowd (President of the Morgan County Democrats Judith Nelson said she sent out a blast email to members), but you can really see four colorful buildings owned by Thomas, who said the top floors will get turned into residential space…

Thomas is the chairman and CEO of Team Cymru, a cybersecurity company. According to the Illinois Times, “Thomas became a venture capitalist investing primarily in tech companies.”

* The event was held next to the Strawn Opera House, another one of Thomas’ projects. Journal Courier…

Jacksonville developers are aiming to resurrect an iconic 163-year-old opera house in downtown Jacksonville.

Rabbi Rob and Lauren Thomas took ownership Thursday of the property at 31 S. Central Park Plaza that housed Strawn Opera House. The couple says they plan on rebuilding the opera house to what it looked like when it opened in the mid-19th century. […]

Missouri author Mark Twain spoke at the building on Feb. 1, 1869, during which he delivered a speech on “The American Vandal Abroad.” Irish poet Oscar Wilde delivered a lecture at the hall on March 7, 1882, which the Journal-Courier — then the Jacksonville Journal — reported on the following day.

“Doubtless in his travels in this country Oscar Wilde has had the pleasure of lecturing to larger audiences than the one assembled at the Opera House last night,” the paper said. “But then again, it has been his lot on not a few occasions to face a larger proportion of empty seats that greeted him upon his appearance here.”

The opera house burned down on June 27, 1889. The building erected in its stead had its roof collapse more than a century later in May 1988, leading to its second floor being removed.

Rabbi Thomas told us yesterday that one addition to the opera house, not included in the original designs, will be a clock tower—“because every square should have a clock tower.”

* Thomas and his wife Lauren pose in front of the future opera house…