Our Place
Spots of trouble here and there…
The Riviera will be having rebirthing pains, and those are going to start well before any internal construction or reconstruction gets underway. Right now, the first steps in the renters, the small businesses that have survived inside the central ‘mall’ of the first floor, are being paired down from eight or nine businesses to six. Who is going to go and who is going to stay? The ultimate decision-maker, with respect to who has to leave and who gets to stay, will be made by the city council itself.
Meanwhile, there’s going to be plenty of maneuvering by these businesses to remain, as the outrageously cheap rent they’ve been charged for years has made them all very profitable. Not one of the stores is likely to say such a thing, however. Another small series of smoldering coals is the issue of slips and buoys. Linda Frame, Lake Geneva’s wonderful new harbormaster, is going through the paperwork that is generated as people are granted lower rates than anywhere that can be found on the open private market. Many of those leases have been allowed to be purchased at these cheap rates where they should not have qualified in the first place. There are a lot of people who are simply making believe they are legal residents of the town in order to avoid the much higher ‘outsider’ fees. Linda is dogged and determined, however, but there’s a lot of pressure coming from Tom Earle and a few others on the council about how that rigorous ongoing examination should be terminated and those ‘poor’ people left alone. You go, Linda!
Lake Geneva Top Secret Meeting revealed.
Hillmoor. The White River Holding Group. They are coming to the table. The owners of the Hillmoor property have finally been ‘at it’ long enough with city activists and the leadership of the city itself to begin to see some sense. The White River Group wants to know if the city would like to sit down and discuss what it is that the city might like to see on the property as its vision of development. Barring that, the property owners are willing to discuss and negotiate a fair market price for the property, and have the city take over ownership. It has taken years to get this far in making sure that this very key and beautiful piece of vital Lake Geneva property not be wasted or left to remain fallow. Why this kind of great news has to be discussed behind closed doors is not only disappointing but in many ways self-defeating.
The only reason to keep stuff like this secret is to make sure that the public is not involved in any decisions that might be made about it. That’s not going to happen in this case. Not anymore.
