OUR PLACE

 

Ban lifted at Riviera. Sometimes it works. The Geneva Shore Report ran a story a few weeks ago about a woman (the wonderful woman who runs the candy shop there at the end of the pier) who was banned from visiting her store by the former city administrator. Darth, the former administrator (better known to some as Dennis Jordon) is now doing his Darth Vadar thing on the police and fire commission while “Utah” Blaine, the current administrator has stepped in to bring his form of justice to this situation and Lake Geneva as a whole. Without out so much as firing one round from one of his equalizing six-guns the woman at the candy store was taken off the blocked and banned list and allowed to return to being as sweet to her customer base as the products she sells. Blaine has also been rumored to have run right into the massive concrete wall erected between the city utility department (where that “pontiff of power”, Dan Winkler, earns more than anyone else in the city) and the rest of Lake Geneva.

Chamber goes after concessions on Riviera Pier. The Lake Geneva Area Chamber of Commerce, sometimes leaving out the “area” for effect, has conquered the Convention and Visitor’s Bureau, taking it like the German’s took Belgium, without so much as firing a shot. This chimerical chamber, beholden to no one except the ephemeral leaders behind the scenes has now set its sights on Poland, or in this local case the Riviera Pier Concessions. At one time the concessions were leased out to private business and the negative results of that experiment caused the contract to be abrogated when it expired. This time around, not faced with some private enterprise operation but the Panzer Division of the Lake Geneva Area Chamber of Commerce, the concession contract is once again ready to be let out and the merchants renting space put in the line of 105mm howitzers. The new chamber, much changed after being run by old George for so many years, comes on like paratroopers and those storm troopers are about to land right on top of the Riviera complex. Candy and snow cones could get a whole lot more expensive. The Lake Area Chamber happens to be an affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The U.S. Chamber is currently under fire for spending millions abroad to support the spread of smoking cigarettes in foreign countries.

Where is your chamber money going?

This would be a great question for the next Chamber meeting.

 It was lurking there, but it sure isn’t anymore. The Geneva Inn rises once more from its foundationally flawed roots to spread its octopus arms. What’s going on with this single hotel mounted high up on the bluff just south of the BigFoot Beach stretch of South Lake Shore Road?

Slam bam, thank you ma’am is what’s going on.

With the aiding and abetting of Town of Linn’s allegedly strange town attorney, the Inn, on Monday night, convinced the town board to go right around normal procedure and allow the next hearing on the Inn’s expansion to go straight to discussion and voting on rezoning adjoining parcels. What was gone around? A change to the town’s master plan for development (the Town of Linn Comprehensive Plan). Normally, a change to that plan would require a discussion and town board vote all on its own.

Not this time. For some reason town watchdog and chairman Jim Weiss didn’t seem disturbed by the shuffle the Geneva Inn was pulling.

Sign up for Updates