Front Page
LAKE GENEVA CITY PLANNERS SPOT ON!
Lake Geneva’s city planners agree that the city needs to take immediate action in order for it to survive as the vibrant center it has become. Jackie Mich and Sonja Kruesel, of Vandewalle & Associates, gave an updated presentation on ‘gateway corridors’ as a comprehensive plan implementation item. The idea is to have the main entrances into Lake Geneva be treated as the vital business and life-giving entries to the city that they really are. The areas being considered for attention are Highway 12, County Highway H and Wells Street, Highway 120 and Edwards Boulevard, Highway 50 and Main Street, and George Street, and South Lake Shore Drive. These are the main gateways into Lake Geneva that may need stricter regulations requiring a less generically hard look and are to be held to a higher standard. The new ordinance has yet to be written, covering this effort, and that effort will likely need to be rewritten a few times before approval is secured.
The plan commission is not opposed to the idea of designating other locations in the city as gateway corridors once the contemplated ordinance is written. The commissioners were interested and enthusiastic about highlighting what makes Lake Geneva special. Jackie Mich shared many thoughts on what the ordinance could look like, including avoiding adding more ‘grey box’ commercial buildings, promoting quality architecture, the use of classy materials, and improving site designs. The gateways are expected to include pedestrian and bike connections, and the overall theme will be a less commercialized look while limiting and/or regulating any future drive-thru businesses. Gas stations could potentially be required to put gas pumps and car washes in the back of buildings, when possible, more greenery and landscaping may be required, but this is all in the brainstorming phase.
The next step is for Jackie Mich to get a plan drawn up and present it before the plan commission to be reviewed and amended as needed. A public hearing will also need to be scheduled to allow public input. Finally, the city council will need to review, and possibly amend, the ordinance, before a vote is taken. This is all going to take time, at least two months they said, but most likely longer. The Geneva Shore Report ran, last week, as its featured front-page article, about the fact how the City of Lake Geneva must take action to preserve the magnificent identity it has worked so hard to build over the years. It was a great pleasure for the GSR staff to attend and cover the story about how the company hired by the city for city planning is ‘throwing fastballs over the plate’ when it comes to working on this issue.
The traffic coming into and out of Lake Geneva is about to overwhelm the downtown and every place that is located in the vicinity of that downtown area. Something has got to be done, and, with the advent of this firm going to work on the problem, it is likely that something will be done. The GSR staff had no idea that Vandewalle and Associates were hot on the trail of discovery when it comes to figuring out exactly what the growing size of the influx of tourists really is, predictively as well as currently, and the actions that must be undertaken to accommodate the resultant problems, since cutting the traffic off or slowing public visitations is not possible. Now, because this subject is an agenda item and the city planners are doing their work, it is going to come down to the city council to evaluate, modify, and then approve the actions that must be funded and then implemented.