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THEY’RE BACK!!!
Back in the early 2000s, Hillmoor was a vast brewing chasm of controversial ownership and potential development. The Geneva Shore Report and so many others, like the Friends of Hillmoor, took after the Whitewater Corporation who owned the land, and then the Lake Geneva mayor and city council who were to decide its development. While that pitched battle was going on and the positive results of fighting that awful corporation was being brought into eventual positive fruition, there was lurking nearby an attempt to basically do away with the Maytag Lagoon, under the guise of the current downtown boat launch moved, do away with “Paradise Road” (that part of the South Lake Shore Drive that passes along Big Foot Beach in front of the State Park) and channel vehicles entirely around the city to the east side of the park where Highway H is called the bypass.
The Maytag Lagoon would get the launch, the current section of the highway would be taken out, the launch moved, and the area turned into another marina. Time was taken by nearly all to thunder and bellow about this awful ugly idea and it was defeated soundly, even while the battle over Hillmoor brewed ever onward to its conclusion with the ‘forced’ sale of the property to the City of Lake Geneva. The death of that awful Maytag Marina idea was premature, however. City Council Person Joel Holland, in association with the chair of the Lake Geneva Development Association are headed off to the DNR to revive the idea and see if the DNR will support a review of all the data and allow them to proceed back to the city council to see if the developers (most of whom would love trashing that entire area and the beauty of its very existence) can proceed with plans to end Big Foot Beach’s as a beach and turn it into a monied yacht owner haven, like most of the rest of the marinas around Geneva Lake, where the boats mostly sit in canvas covered slots, another badge that their owners have real money, and then the boats mostly go nowhere.
That the current city launch area located at the very bottom of Center Street as Center ‘Ts’ into Wrigley Drive is a bad one, a dangerous one, and makes the city no money (the city has to pay for the losses there every year) is without question. However, the municipal pier could be taken down and the boat ramp left there, which by law cannot be moved or destroyed, but also the parking stalls up above the parking lot for the towing vehicles and trailers could be turned into 33 paying stalls generating, according to the city’s ‘Elvira’ parking queen, would come in at about $70,000 a year and the liability for problems at the current boat ramp reduced to just about nothing.
Mayor Krause is all over this. His father-in-law was the superintendent of the state park for several years during this last attempt to take the ‘peoples’ park and trash it. Todd’s dad-in-law came up with many minor details, like deeds and legal papers and such that might have killed the first deal even without the kind of uproar the GSR and others created to make sure that wonderfully beautiful part of Lake Shore Drive did not go off into a developer’s dumpster mind storage place. Once again, the forces of amicable beauty, planned ambiance, and simple good taste must rise up to defend that stretch of beach, road, and lagoon.
Why the city will not import sand, one of Wisconsin’s biggest exports, to fill Big Foot Beach and have it extended out twenty yards, or so every year is simply a bad taste bad dream. What would be wrong with building a small waist-high stone wall along the entire exposed part of the road to protect children and other pedestrians? No expense is spared on taking care of Lake Geneva’s downtown beach because that’s the beach that makes money. Is it really only about money in all of Lake Geneva?
