SURPRISING STUFF
Board of Park Commissioners discuss the renaming of Flat Iron Park to Willow Park, and Library Park to Elm Park.
Why? In the same meeting that this was being discussed the ordering of new park signs was also on the agenda. Whether the names are changed or not it’s all about consistency with the names on all sites and fresh new signs to highlight Lake Geneva Parks. Flat Iron Park has been this for so long and changing it seems pointless to some but if history is considered maybe it’s justified. Lake Geneva has some great stories detailing its settlement and development. Flat Iron Park was once called Willow Park and that was appropriate as the roadway leading to it was also Willow Road.
A good question is; why was it ever changed?
Flat Iron Park is the venue of many wonderful annual events and home of the Lake Geneva Visitors Center. It might take a little getting used to but if the story is explained and maybe memorialized on a plaque of some sort it may be accepted. Library Park houses the library and that’s what visitors know it as but, in the past, it was known as Elm Park and some locals still refer to it as that. This park is the location of the Lake Geneva Public Library and is the perfect spot to relax under a shade tree while taking in the sights and sounds of the lake. Consistency on all the different maps including virtual maps is important and that is the park board’s main goal. The discussion continues with the different committees and do not have a final decision as yet. Whatever the two very popular parks are named they are a treasure in the city and should be treated as such.
The big question, in considering name changes, is why would anybody in their right mind want to take two names that have become so embedded in everyone’s mind and change them? Maybe Flat Iron and Library are not the two most creative names in the world, but they sure aren’t as dead flat boring and unimaginative as Willow and Elm.
What’s going on at the cove, just sort of on the sly?
How about the strip of parking lot the Cove owns just across South Lake Shore Drive from where the Cove convention center is located? Just south of that small lot is a city lot that adjoins McDonalds on Wells Street. The Cove wants to sell it back to the city. The Cove, however, when it was built, was required to purchase that lot, and make a parking lot out of the land. That was part of the agreement with the city so that the city would not have to have all its parking taken by the people who attend conventions. If the city buys into this scam then it will have to be one of those little games that goes on in plain sight but not talked about, like the gambling that goes on in Lake Geneva at the bars. At least gambling has a main character of interest named “Care Bear,” her real name protected to keep her from having an apoplectic attack.
The Care Bear was in town during the last two weekends accompanied by her collectors (yes, those big apes could have made it as extras on the Sopranos!). There’s no Tavern League to be concerned about either over this attempt by the Cove to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. There’s only the Geneva Shore Report. Will the new ownership of Fat Cats really make the kind of difference expected at the scene of this old den of iniquity, or dive, as it’s more normally called? Is the gambling money just too much to ignore as gross revenue coming in? Is the insulation provided by all law enforcement departments about what’s really going on be so protective that the new owners may just choose to participate instead of getting rid of the addictive and financially disabling vice?
