Front Page
TOYING WITH DISASTER
The State of Wisconsin is coming to Lake Geneva in force and with a near demented approach to modernizing the central lifeline that provides activity, commerce, and identity to this small vital community. That lifeline is called Main Street, and its maintenance as the aged and culturally significant identity cannot be overlooked or treated lightly. The State of Wisconsin has done almost nothing to assure that the businesses and locals will not be damaged by this major upheaval, if it is allowed to proceed. With a divided city council (the four of Howell, Dunn, Straube and Yunker all are on one side and Fesenmaier, Esposito, Yager and Frame on the other) the city is running on the ability and expressed knowledge of the ‘tiebreaker.’ That tie breaker is the person whom the Geneva Shore Report currently refers to as the Mayor Mayor, taken from the movie Catch 22 where one incompetent officer was called Major Major.
The Mayor Mayor of Lake Geneva is not incompetent, she’s merely sort of ‘not with it’ many times now when the chips are down. The parking issues in downtown Lake Geneva are a very descriptive case in point, about her performance, or lake of it. It’s going to take more than the City of Lake Geneva can bring to bear, apparently, to intercede for the locals (the real owners of Lake Geneva) and the state. Those people cannot send the giant machinery into the heart of the city and tear it apart through two to three seasons of the city’s most vital tourist, circulation, and sales results time. Such behavior, if allowed to be exercised as the state’s plan seems to indicate will disappear the city as the locals have all come to know it. Oh, the tourists would, for the most part, come back, as they always do, but they are not stakeholders in the culture that has risen up to make Lake Geneva a very special and vital heartbeat of the Southern Wisconsin geographic area. The tourists have been around for a long time, but never in the numbers the city has come to know because of the pandemic’s effects. Chicago found Lake Geneva and that’s not going to change. In order to accommodate the needs of those thousands of tourists, as well as the needs of the locals, from individuals to businesses, Maine Street does have to be repaved. It does not have to be ripped apart ten feet down over a nearly interminable time period.
The work it does need to have done must be accomplished at high speed. That means with arc lights all night long, seven days a week and twenty-hours at a time. That kind of project costs a lot of money and if the state is not willing to pay for that then the whole thing needs to be cancelled and planning begins all over again. There are also changes built into the state’s potential project that will change parking spaces, as well as entrances and exits onto and off of Main Street. Right now, this project needs to be stopped in its tracks unless the city is willing to endure the loss of half the businesses it currently has on Main and Broad Streets near the vital draw of the beach area. Will the city’s Mayor Mayor be able or willing to stop this ‘execution’ of Lake Geneva’s current business environment? Possibly, but in measuring her conduct lately, it would kind of seem not. Mayor Mayor is a good woman but is she a good mayor? Only time will tell.
You refer to this like it’s a bad thing . The road is deteriorating and needs the infrastructure replaced/ repaired while it can be done with funding .
As to the downtown being a critical center of the town for locals , nope locals mostly walk downtown to library or to the lake front areas and really don’t use the area for shopping .
The continuous usage of RT 50 with heavy traffic and large trucks only does more damage to the road and as that continues the local shops will be exposed to other issues in their buildings.
I mean have you stood on the roadside when the dump trucks and semi’s go by the ground actually vibrates .
Losing some parking downtown IMO would be beneficial to all . The pulling in & out of the spots only delays the flow of traffic . This means that the city’s outer parking lots and ( tram / trolley system ) could ease traffic thru town and eliminate the constant flow thru issues all the way out EDWARDS
Blvd.
Tourism is not a reason to allow a city to not look at issues regarding infrastructure and the well being of a city of residents .