Our Place

The BID.
Lake Geneva Business Improvement District brought in new leadership and just about everything else along with it. What are those new guys and gals doing, anyway? How about purchasing one of those new-fangled sidewalk steam cleaners? Yes, that machine, under human supervisory assistance, will be running up and down the sidewalks of downtown Lake Geneva all summer, cleaning to the point where it actually pulls old worked in gum right out of the cement. Old tobacco stains will make the areas outside of places like Fat Cat’s (one of Lake Geneva’s old style ‘street corner tavern’ kinds of places) Fat Cats Lake Genevalook more like pleasant sidewalks instead of tossed out grandma’s patchwork quilts. Those are the places that need the most help. “Norm” can be found in either bar late in the day and probably a good deal of the nights These places serve a purpose well illustrated by the popular old television show called Cheer’s. It’s wonderful to go where everyone knows your name, especially when that place isn’t the holding tank of the Lake Geneva Police Department.

The BID is sponsoring Restaurant Week, which has been going on since June 2nd and will run through June 9th (as announced on the GSR website). The Business Improvement District has a key player in its midst and his name is Mike Kocourek. What a difference well thought leadership, doing business with a heart and mind makes. The “Paint In” in Lake Geneva starts this weekend at the behest of the BID. The Lake Geneva Area Chamber of Commerce may come out of its deeply dark turtle shell and participate in the community, as well. The appointment of David Lindalow,as president, the brilliant Abbey General

Mike Kocourek Lake Geneva

Mike Kocourek, one of the neatest
and best businessmen in Lake Geneva,
now heading up the Business Improvement
District.

Manager, will hopefully change the direction and scope of that organization. With all the tax money diverted from Lake Geneva’s wise oversight, handling and most judicious spending, something great has simply got to emerge from the former muck of its existence. The Chamber gets its money from several different sources; 70% (2017) of the room tax revenues taken in from all room rentals in Lake Geneva, as well as $295.00 a year from every business that chooses to join its membership. The Geneva Shore Report used to be a member until paying the chamber came to seem like spending money and getting less than nothing in return. That’s not going to happen under Lindalow’s tutelage, so the GSR is going “back.” The Business Development District is a bit different. There are no optional memberships. If you do business in Lake Geneva then once a year you pay a tax on the value of everything you have and keep in your place of business, and part of that tax goes to the BID. This amounted to $199,000.00 last year, which also happens to be the size of the BID budget. Some things are working in Lake Geneva and it would appear that the BID is definitely one of them, and maybe, just maybe, the Lake Geneva Area Chamber of Commerce is not far behind. Maybe the Chamber will even allow their finances to go public, like the BID just did.

Tragedy on the Streets.
There was a bad accident involving a motorcycle and auto (the Geneva Shore Report refuses to call all accidents crashes, as America’s trial lawyers have demanded of every other media outlet). It was a bad accident in that over a gallon of blood was left to soak into the asphalt near Williams and Grant Streets on Monday around three-twenty in the afternoon. There’s a Geneva Shore Report video of the aftermath that went up on the GSR Facebook website twenty minutes later. The continuing controversy of motorcyclist’s wearing of helmets or not continues. There were no helmets in this case. Would the cyclist have been more likely to survive wearing one? Undoubtedly. But should the cyclist be castigated for not wearing one when no accident was predicable?

That’s the question.

There was some discussion about this issue (again) on the GSR website, with some people going so far as to blame the automobile driver. In truth, no report about the accident has been read so nobody, except possibly a few policemen, have any knowledge about assigned culpability. And the cause is rather pointless in the discussion about helmets. Less than half the states have laws requiring motorcyclists to wear helmets. Wisconsin does not require them. About half the motorcyclist’s who come through Lake Geneva use them. Most of the non-motorcycle population voting on traffic laws feel that, since they don’t ride or drive a motorcycle that the people who do, should be allowed to choose for themselves because they are the ones to suffers the effects. This argument, about whether wearing helmets is a good thing or a violation of freedom of the road, will not be resolved here.
The staff of the GSR hates to see any motorists injured or killed, whether they are wearing helmets or not.

Something New in Our Place

Fox River State Bank Lake Geneva

Fox River State Bank comes to Lake Geneva. 70 million in total assets. Almost eighty percent of their asset portfolio goes toward industrial real estate and business loans. They come to Lake Geneva, expanding out from Burlington. A real small town business loan and account resource.

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