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THE SINISTER 16TH OF OCTOBER APPROACHES

The sixteenth of October will see a public hearing and joint meeting of the Lake Geneva City Council and the Plan Commission. Why are they holding a public hearing, and what is it that is bringing them together? Ostensibly, the reason is to vote on modifications to the comprehensive plan to allow two organizations to develop stretches of land that have long been in contention. What is really going on? On the one hand, the new outfit that purchased the Hillmoor property (their CEO was tossed into prison for fraud) wants to put high-density apartment buildings on the old golf course land. The other group controls the Geneva Inn property just outside the City of Lake Geneva’s border (but within its extended development control area) wants to finally get permission to build commercial structures down on the water near BigFoot Beach.

That first group is such a low-class operation that it is astounding that the community has not stood up as a unit and said not only “no,” but “hell no.” About the last thing the City of Lake Geneva needs is that pristine “entry” land, out there on the eastern approach to the town, filled with high density apartments by an outfit of questionable ethics and principles. The Geneva Inn, on the other hand, is rushing headlong into putting Jim Weiss into a terrible position.

The Geneva Inn is pushing this commercial conversion through a weak and disorganized Lake Geneva leadership to try to force the Town of Linn to relent and let them develop commercially on the water (or more likely sell out to the Dells people as soon as this valuable change is accomplished), or they will secede and join the City of Lake Geneva. If the City of Lake Geneva will force the change of the Comprehensive Plan to permit this, then what decision will Weiss make? Will Jim Weiss stand firm and do the right thing or will he cave in and lower himself to serving the “good old developer boys” instead of the people who put him in office. And what choice do the residents of Town of Linn have except to hate their next-door neighbor for this kind of extortive behavior? Nobody but the developers want to “throw the dice” to see what direction this new development would take. Lots of games have been played over the past three years, as the Geneva Inn has attempted to fight back against the surrounding landowners and other residents who love the way Geneva Lake is right now.

One of the tricks is illustrated by a photo in this issue. The photo is a blowup of a map that was presented to Town of Linn residents at the great map coloring failure held a few weeks back. The distributed maps note that the whole of the property had been colored red (thereby making it commercial, when it was never zoned commercial). The maps were distributed and nobody noticed, which prompted the map circulating operation to say that everyone had agreed on the boundaries of development as laid out by the map. The blow up of that small portion of the map is included in this issue of the paper. You can see for yourself that the entire area around where the Geneva Inn structure is located is colored red. The commercial designation was a done deal without voting or any other input from the public. Because no complaint was voiced, the conclusion could be made, and was made, that the commercial designation was accepted.

But that’s not the case. Now the Town of Linn is in a pickle. Sinister is the word used to title this headline. Sinister is the only word that can properly be used to describe the organizations, and the people who work in the communities with them. They are all coming to the meeting on the 16th at City of Lake Geneva’s City Hall in the municipal building at 6pm. It’s high time you, as residents and citizens, come to see who these people are and take the measure of their mettle, face to face.

You will be surprised at what you see. They will be shocked by what they see.

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