Letter to the Editor
by Ruth Hackman (the Kite lady) Lake Geneva resident.
My store is across the street from the Riviera so I see people every Saturday speeding around looking for parking and not wanting to be late. Sometimes they try to park in the alley next to my store so I have to warn them they’ll get ticketed or towed and that makes them mad at me– like it’s my fault there’s no parking and that I should solve the parking problem. I can hear the band music from my store, but when it gets loud and annoying, I can close the store and go home for peace and quiet.
So I can imagine how awful it would be if I had to live next to one and couldn’t escape. When I leave for home at night, I can see people all dressed-up walking around down by the beach, in the park and out on the pier. It’s nice to see the young men and women having fun celebrating, but some are on the pier getting sick and throwing-up into the lake and I worry about them falling in. But the thing that bothers me most is when arguments become physical and men start pushing each other around. The security guards usually show up right away and break things up, but occasionally the Lake Geneva Police have to be called.
When I’m leaving for home, it’s not really that late, so I always imagine how bad it must get latter at night after a lot more drinking. I don’t mean to complain about the Riviera because I think it is a good business for the city. It’s just that the closer you get to it, the more bad things you see, so I know I wouldn’t want one of those places next to my house and, if you think about it, you wouldn’t either. And I don’t believe the City has the right to tell our neighbors in Linn that the Geneva Inn has the right to put one in their neighborhood either.
Linn Township said “no!” and we should back them up and not give permission to the Geneva Inn just so the city can get a few more dollars in taxes. Besides, it would be competition for the Riviera. I know the Bella Vista has a Banquet Hall inside their hotel and the Regional News ran a story almost exactly 2 years ago about a lawsuit in Judge Reddy’s court over noise complaints from hotel guests who couldn’t sleep. The Regional News didn’t say how the case turned out, but it makes me wonder why the Geneva Inn would want to put up a tent for Weddings right next to their hotel. Their guests will complain about the noise too– along with all the neighbors.
