Biography of Bob McElwee

Bob McElwee is a partner in a new sustainable resort project called Green Mill Village in central Illinois. In addition to a hotel, conference center, spa, restaurants and retail centers, the project will be affiliated with a new production facility that will produce wind turbines. McElwee is also an investor in a new, local organic meat processing plant that will supply the resort restaurants and meeting center.

Bringing government, global companies and entrepreneurs together for this project will not only result in a boost in tourism traffic, but in new production jobs with the meat processing and other food production from his new line of locally-grown products - all marketed under the Family Journeys (FJ) banner. FJ is McElwee's company that is designing and supervising the local production of everything from 1940's furniture to food products.

The dream - which is now becoming reality - create a sustainable resort and village that produces most of its products locally and provides new jobs from manufacturing and production that does not have a negative impact on the environment.

A small town boy himself, McElwee grew up in Hume (population 500), just minutes away from the Arcola Ill. resort site. McElwee grew up working on local farms as the son of a farm worker, but decided early in his high school years he wanted to go to college and become a journalist and own his own newspaper. Graduating from Eastern Illinois University in 1979 as the first college graduate from his family, he worked as a reporter/editor for a local newspaper for several years and then returned to school to earn an M.S. degree in technology. Years later, he created a small town newspaper and then sold it to a newspaper group.

To pay for his graduate school he worked as the business/advertising manager of the college daily newspaper, receiving national attention as one of the top business managers in the country. The attention landed him an offer to become the director of student publications at the University of Tennessee (UT), the youngest director (age 26) of a major university publications operation in the country.

After the daily newspaper, yearbook and magazine received the top editorial and business awards, he moved back to Illinois to take a faculty position in the journalism department. The move allowed him to be close to his father who had been in a serious accident, and to pursue his entrepreneurial interests.

His first venture was a small PR and publishing firm that turned into a web development company - within three years this company was a leader in the development area, producing web sites and software applications for global companies. Later he became a marketing consultant, working for companies ranging from pet food products to passing library referendums with his own company - A New Leaf.

He worked closely with Agri-Fab, a local agricultural manufacturing company, to structure a deal with the City of Arcola that included tax incentives and investment from the city to make the project financially feasible. Then he began working with local furniture manufacturers, and other companies to produce most of the products that will be available in the Green Mill Hotel.

His marketing company, A New Leaf, provides marketing services for the individual companies in Green Mill Village, as well as the overall marketing for the village itself. Family Journeys, his product company, will offer everything from locally made 1940's furniture to sheets to apple butter.

In his spare time you can probably find him on his farm, where he grows fruits and vegetables for his restaurant and hotel. There he is also building a "farm of the future," powered by wind and solar ...a sustainable office and a retreat for his four children.

As the publisher of a new online travel magazine called Modern Traveler, he plans to promote sustainable travel and Voluntourism (combining travel with service) later this year. The magazine will include celebrities and "the rest of us," as he says, in an interactive publication that will feature "enlightened explorers" in the world of travel and business.

Farmer, teacher, author, photographer, publisher or entrepreneur...what is he today...depends on when and where you catch him. One thing is constant - his belief that the U.S. can once again become a strong nation, without dependence on foreign oil, creating local jobs to keep young people in small towns.

More information about Bob McElwee and his companies can be found at these Web sites or by sending an e-mail to Sarah Miller at smiller@insidethegreenbox.com.

www.insidethegreenbox.com - (A New Leaf Marketing)
www.greenmillvillage.com - (Green Mill Village Resort)
www.moderntravelermagazine.com - (Modern Traveler magazine)