So. Illinois city looking for big grant

ROBINSON, Ill. (WTHI) - A Wabash Valley city is looking into grant funding to help local businesses. The economy of Robinson, Illinois revolves around the Marathon Oil refinery at the south end of the city.
    
But, the main road that leads to the city's largest employer has fallen into disrepair. Now, the city and county are looking for a way to upgrade the road with as little cost to taxpayers as possible.
   
We sat down with the mayor of Robinson to find out why this one street is so important.
    
Marathon uses the road South Eaton Street as their main entrance, but one look at the road and you can see it's not wide enough to accommodate the more than 100 semis that use it everyday.
    
In addition to the 600 Marathon workers, the city estimates another 600 employees work at other companies along South Eaton Street. Many of those are manufacturing and construction companies.
    
So the city has applied for a TARP state grant. The grant would give the city 800,000 dollars to repair and widen the road. That would leave the city to make up the remaining portion of the 1.3 million dollars.
    
The Crawford County Economic Development association explained it's important to the economy of the entire area.

“We think this grant is really vital, cause our county runs on oil,” Bob Berty of the development association said, “We have three pillars to our economy one of them is farming the other is manufacturing, we have the Hershey plant, but one of the three legs to our economy is oil."

The city expects to hear back on the grant in late January.