SMALL JUNK
Lake Geneva thawed entirely last Friday night and was clear of almost all ice by Saturday morning. The first of the commercial tourist boats landed at Riviera Pier on Monday morning, having been launched in Williams Bay and guided across the sparkling clear but icy cold waters.
Photo courtesy of Bruce Thompson and Thompson Fine Arts, Walworth WI
Beware! A serious virus is surfacing in Lake Geneva and the citizens need to be made aware. While Lake Geneva is still recuperating from the damage of the Emerald Ash Borer infestation a few years ago, a new and much more serious disease has invaded the city even more serious because it distresses entire parks. The effects of this park blight spread are being seen in BigFoot Park as this is written. Flat Iron Park is a pleasant, small park sitting on the shores of Geneva Lake in the City of Lake Geneva, with a simple but charming gazebo and a couple of neat statues. Like it’s neighbor, Library Park, its function is to provide just the right amount of green space and open area to be the perfect setting for a get together or picnic on the grass.
This new park blight first was seen to begin in Flat Iron Park a few years ago when the gazebo built by former Badger students was flattened. The old gazebo was great because it was just the right size and was in an ideal location. It was readily visible without being conspicuous or overpowering the rest of the park. The replacement gazebo proved to be the exact opposite. It was moved to the center of the park and stands out today like a proverbial sore thumb. If you’ve heard the expression that a giraffe is a horse designed by a committee, you know this gazebo is a giraffe because it was so obviously designed by a committee. Park developmental blight intensified when the City’s Director of Perpetual Projects recommended a new “Bunk Pavilion”. Pavilions can be nice if they’re of the right size and built in the right place, and as long as it is realized that are not only seasonal but weather vulnerable. For such a small park, the Brunk Pavilion (now under construction) is too big. It will dominate the area and the park will simply serve as a front lawn for this new edifice.
Also, the pavilion should have been a three-sided structure with its back closed in so it could have been built in the very rear of the park, if it needed to be built at all. A nice tent would have served just as good a purpose for Thursday’s Music in the Park. The $400,000 for the pavilion could have been put to much better use by building a year round, fully enclosed performance and community arts center with actual seats and a real stage.
Flat Iron Park is afflicted, but the biggest attack of developmental park blight is occurring at BigFoot Beach State Park. Mr. Winkler’s Plan to re-route Lakeshore Drive through the State Park would certainly win the Olympic Gold Medal for Park and Lakefront destruction. The only other contender for that medal was a proposal to put the George Lucas Star Wars Museum and the Obama Presidential Library on Chicago’s Lake Front. Both men (Lucas and Obama) want their personal memorial shrines constructed in their lifetime but they’re giving up their bizarre proposals because of all the negative backlash and threatened lawsuits.
Hopefully, Dan Winkler and the City of Lake Geneva will give up the insane BigFoot Park proposal too.
The Place to Be!
Lake Geneva Museum
Go the museum in downtown Lake Geneva.
It’s kind of hidden over there by the river just off Main Street. If you head East on Main then it’s just before you get to the bridge on the left. If you pass the Utility Commission you’ve gone to far. This museum is simply a work of art. Lake Geneva as it was in so many ways. The docent smiling on the left is exactly the feeling you’ll get by going.
Mr Winkler seems to do a lot of things such as skate board park, builing gazebos, oh there is more…
but can’t even do what is supposed to be done when it comes to the water department-
he said he could run the water department by him self-
ya right..
The water department needs big work done and Dan seems to push it all under the table–
hmm wonder why–
maybe to busy playing with his parks?
He doesnt have a clue and gets paid big money do to nothing for the water department–
Thanks for your input, Jane.
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