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THE PARKING HEARTBREAK!

Lake Geneva Public Library wants a parking lot. The Library Board unanimously approved proceeding with a proposal to the city council for a city capital funded parking lot (that is from the seven million dollar formerly secret reserve fund). The parking lot would be located at the east end of the library. Instantly the question becomes what will this look like?

The east side of the library runs along Wrigley Drive and it’s not that big. Kapur provided a couple of different options on how this lot could be done. The parking lot could potentially provide an additional fifteen stalls and showed what access and exit looks like on Wrigley/Cook Street. There is already a lot going on in the area with street parking, traffic, the American Legion hut, lots of foot traffic, and access to the Riviera Beach, but the library board believes this can be done tastefully and would ensure as little green space as possible would be lost. The idea is to improve access to the library and encourage more use of the library and all it offers. The library would benefit on the county level with its own parking lot and would qualify for more county funding programs.

The library believes the parking lot would free up the reserved parking spots on Main Street designated to library patrons and would help the city in its effort to provide additional parking. If the Library Board understands correctly the city has undesignated funds that can be used for the engineering and construction costs, and the library would handle the maintenance and snow removal of the lot.

The Lake Geneva Public Works Committee discussed the proposal at Monday’s meeting, where it was considered and then set for further review.  The parking lot could potentially be a near-future project with a completion goal  for the fall of 2023. There is a lot of red tape and approvals as well as a lot of planning and collaborating with all departments before this is a real thing. This would be a joint effort between the library and the city and if all goes well it will probably be the most controversial new building in the city. That the idea doesn’t make any sense at all, especially from an ambiance and beauty standpoint, and the Sturges family provisions for the use of the land when they donated it to the city, this hair-brained ideas needs to die a quiet death.

There’s really no sense going into the magical seven million dollars in overpaid taxes (called a reserve fund by Laura, the city’s iffy comptroller) that would be used to pay for the building of it.  That any entity (the parking assembly of decision-makers here) wants to extend the parking fiasco to take away park land and reduce the ambiance of Lake Geneva is almost astounding. The addition of the  fifteen metered stalls would also come with the loss of at least six stalls already existent on Wrigley.  It would call for the moving of the moving of the existing American Legion hot dog hut.  Where, in God’s name would that be moved to?  Further down Wrigley was mentioned.  In front of Speedo’s or Popeyes?  What are these supposed intelligent committee members smoking?  The city went  one point million dollars into the red on the budget.  They did that of their own volition and now this.