DIXON, Ill. -- Ronald Reagan is remembered for dozens of films and two terms in the White House that helped end the Cold War, but he once said saving 77 lives as a riverfront lifeguard in his small Illinois hometown was one of his proudest moments.
By decade's end, a bronze statue will give the late president a lasting legacy on the shores of the Rock River, just a couple of miles from the beaches he patrolled for seven summers before moving on to Hollywood, Washington and a place in history.
The 9-foot sculpture of a film-era Reagan on horseback will be the centerpiece of a $3.2 million riverfront development project that officials predict will spur tourism, housing and retail growth in this city of about 16,000.
''There's so much interest in Reagan that it will be a big, big attraction, I think, to bring people to the riverfront,'' Dixon Mayor Jim Burke said.
The statue and development proposals had each inched along separate paths for years until they merged about a year ago, yielding a combination that officials say will ramp up Dixon's economy when the planned riverfront complex opens in 2008 or 2009.
Newspaper publisher Tom Shaw is credited with linking the projects after he helped resurrect the sculpture, an idea floated two decades ago that stalled until interest in Reagan rekindled when he died in 2004 after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease.
Shaw and about a dozen other investors put up the nearly $170,000 to complete the bronze tribute to Dixon's most famous son.
As they debated where to put it, Shaw said he thought of plans for a large public gathering area on the downtown riverfront that officials say will draw shoppers and spinoff development.
Officials say both projects would have succeeded alone, thanks to private funding for the statue and a $2.5 million federal grant approved last year for riverfront development. Combining them was ''just the topping on the sundae,'' said Shaw, president and CEO of Shaw Newspapers, whose nearly 40 papers include dailies in Dixon and nearby Sterling.
''This makes it a destination,'' Shaw said. ''People will come here to see the sculpture and it becomes a portal to other Reagan offerings.''
Dixon already boasts Reagan sites including his boyhood home, church and former grade school. The sculpture also is helping raise part of the roughly $700,000 that a local foundation needs to augment the federal riverfront grant, officials said. A limited edition of 18-inch replicas are being sold for $6,000 each, with half of the money going to the riverfront project.
