It was not a burning bush in some biblical wilderness, but an industrial 3D printer the size of a small garage — a machine, I would learn, that took a $1.1 million investment to get to Illinois, carrying with it the promise of an affordable housing renaissance across the region known as Little Egypt. And it called to me. I drove past it again and again.

A year prior, in August 2024, this printer was at the center of a groundbreaking ceremony attended by more than 100 people, myself included. I covered the event for Capitol News Illinois and watched as the machine laid down the first layers of what was supposed to be a new beginning. Two local men had promised to help save Cairo, Illinois, by using the machine to print new homes in a town that desperately needed them.

I watched as state and local politicians ceremoniously tossed dirt. Officials posed for photographs beside the machine, holding it up as proof that a new era had arrived. They promised fast, efficient, modern homes — and with them, the sense that someone, at last, was paying attention to this corner of the state.

A year later, though, the printer had produced the framing for exactly one duplex — but the project was abandoned before the interior was finished. Before anyone could move in, the walls cracked. State and city officials break ground on the Cairo, Illinois, 3D-printed duplex project in August 2024.

Julia Rendleman for Capitol News Illinois Ryan Moore, then a Prestige employee, points to a crack in the duplex in December, one of dozens the company says caused it to stop work. Prestige said it waited a year for its printer supplier to provide a crack remediation plan. When one wasn’t provided, the company used hydraulic cement.

Julia Rendleman When I started to investigate what had gone wrong, I found the printer disassembled on a flatbed truck at a country repair shop that doesn’t need to advertise because you either know it’s there or you wouldn’t be going anyway. The more I stared at it, and continued to drive by it, I wondered how a promise as large as housing had been left to rust in the sun and rain. What did this abandoned printer say about false promises so often made in the name of saving rural America?

About officials who insist they are trying to help? And, at the heart of it, how did this quite expensive piece of modern technology become abandoned here in the first place? After the 2024 Cairo duplex celebration, the 3D printer was parked at this country repair shop in Galatia, where parts of it sat outside on a flatbed trailer for more than a year.

Julia Rendleman For an investigation I published with ProPublica in collaboration with Capitol News Illinois, I sought answers to those questions. I followed what became one of the most windy and wild reporting journeys of my life. I learned that, behind the scenes, the project to build 3D housing in Cairo had been ushered along by political connections: State Sen.

Dale Fowler, whose district includes Cairo, helped introduce the 3D printing company to top leaders, including Gov. JB Pritzker and U.S. Sen.

Tammy Duckworth’s office. The company, Prestige Project Management Inc. — in the same Harrisburg, Illinois, high rise as Fowler’s district office — pitched the project as part of the state’s housing future. Read More 3D-Printed Homes, an Abandoned $590,000 Deposit, the FBI: What Really Happened in This Small Town?

A Pritzker spokesperson said the governor’s office took no action after meeting with Prestige. A Duckworth spokesperson said the senator’s office had just revived discussions about how to address Cairo’s housing crisis when Fowler reached out and that the office did not have additional involvement with the company. Fowler took an active role boosting the company’s project in Cairo but said he just wanted to see housing development in the city and wasn’t otherwise involved in Prestige’s business dealings.

What I assumed would be a simple story instead got weird — part Old Testament prophecy, part Facebook rumor mill weird. From left: Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker poses for a photo with Harrisburg Mayor John McPeek and state Sen.

Dale Fowler. During a January 2024 meeting at Harrisburg City Hall, Fowler talked up the Cairo 3D printer project to the governor. Courtesy of Harrisburg Mayor John McPeek I’d learn that within a few months of that groundbreaking party, the work stopped on the duplex.

After the owners of Prestige said dozens of cracks started running through the walls, a half-dozen employees quit the company. Not long after, the FBI launched an investigation into Prestige’s broader business dealings. There have been no charges or arrests, and the owners say they have fully cooper