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A photo-op with Curious George, I'm the one on the left. I remember reading his books on trips to the school library during my early years. After seeing this picture I think George and I should visit The Centre and exercise.
Demolition of the Goodyear Training Center at 211 Douglas started yesterday. See previous post for a list of buildings on the demo schedule.
The city has plans to redevelop the entire block.
From the Courier News.
Also on the council's agenda is spending $20,000 to tear down the city-owned former Goodyear building directly north of the Elgin Law Enforcement Facility.
The building occupies one corner of a downtown block that is largely taken up by the Grater Inc. cheese factory but which the city would like to see redeveloped. Officials probably are not interested in seeing the Goodyear site redeveloped on its own, being more interested in a large-scale project that would include the majority of the block bound by Spring and Kimball streets, Douglas Avenue and Symphony Way, according to Deering."I think we would like to see a bigger plan, a bigger approach, maybe the whole block," he said.
What are your thoughts?
For the second year in a row, Butters, a drama teacher at the school, helped coordinate Fine Arts/Life Arts Career Day, an opportunity for pupils to explore various careers or hobbies and absorb some of the passion for those activities from the people who love doing them.
Margaret and Jeff Kim, for example, got educated in computer science and law, respectively. But the couple have turned their love of martial arts into a running business. The duo runs Kim's Black Belt Academy in downtown Elgin. And on Friday morning, they were speaking with seventh- and eighth-graders about martial arts and their love for it.
Sverre Jarl Andersen, founder of what was known as Andersen’s Gifts of Distinction in downtown Elgin, believed in doing things his way when he opened the store in 1961.
“He would take the business and always want to improve it somehow,” said his son Dave Andersen. “He never wanted to follow the template, he wanted to be the guy that writes the template.”
No trains have been eliminated or added but commuters may find arrival times adjusted by a few minutes at stations between Big Timber Road in Elgin and Union Station.
All new schedules can be viewed at Metra's Web site, www.metrarail.com, starting today, the release said. Commuters can pick up paper copies of the new schedules later in the month at Ogilvie and at Union Station.For Union Pacific/West riders, Metra personnel will pass out schedules at Ogilvie during the evening rush hour on Jan. 12. Those schedules will be available downtown and at all outlying stations after that day.For SouthWest Service and North Central Service commuters, Metra personnel will begin passing out schedules at Union Station on Jan. 19. In the following days, those schedules will be available downtown and at outlying stations, along with revised Milwaukee District West schedules, the release said.
The city council is set to vote Wednesday on tearing down a quartet of vacant buildings, a move that could pave the way for more downtown redevelopment.
Also on the council's agenda is spending $20,000 to tear down the city-owned former Goodyear building directly north of the Elgin Law Enforcement Facility. The building occupies one corner of a downtown block that is largely taken up by the Grater Inc. cheese factory but which the city would like to see redeveloped.
Officials probably are not interested in seeing the Goodyear site redeveloped on its own, being more interested in a large-scale project that would include the majority of the block bound by Spring and Kimball streets, Douglas Avenue and Symphony Way, according to Deering.
"I think we would like to see a bigger plan, a bigger approach, maybe the whole block," he said.
The Elgin Symphony Orchestra has added 200 condominiums and a children's "discovery center" to its proposal to build a 1,800-seat concert hall downtown, directly east of the new Gail Borden Public Library.
The hall would be located on the southern half of roughly 9.5 acres bound by North Grove Avenue and Ann, Kimball and Brook streets. The children's center and a four-level parking deck topped by a condominium tower would stand to the north.
They are open for Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner so stop by and tell them DNA sent you.
This Saturday the entertainment is a singer performing Frank Sinatra Christmas songs from 7 to 9 pm. Have dinner and enjoy the music.
"It was really the restaurants, they were the traffic pull, which in turn led to specialty shop development," Matson said.
From the article "Seminary Street provides the model: Built on restaurants, pubs, specialty stores," about the Main Street commercial district in Galesburg, Illinois. Galesburg was one of the three initial pilot communities where the Main Street model was developed and tested in the late 1970s.
The same wind that helped usher in this Arctic cold front also helped fan the flames of a fire in Central Texas. The difficult weather conditions kept firefighters in Elgin busy for hours. The fire broke out shortly before 2 p.m. and quickly engulfed the old wooden structure that used to house the Elgin Lumber Company.
Read the article here.
Or this article with a photo from the Elgin Courier (Elgin, Texas)
This is too strange. I thought the fact that both Elgin, IL and Elgin, TX are Main Street communities and both have newspapers with Courier in their name. Now large fires within days of each other at vacant lumber yards.
The Flickr photos and Google maps appear at the very bottom of the page if you are using Internet Explorer (IE) but work correctly in Firefox. We're working on this issue.
On the last Saturday before Thanksgiving, the American Independent Business Alliance (AMIBA) wants retailers and consumers across the country to join in the second annual celebration of America Unchained. On November 19, consumers in communities around the country will be asked to shop only at locally owned businesses to maximize the impact of their dollars and potentially inject millions more into their local economy.
Sometimes seemingly small acts can make a big impact. Take family spending. You may think you're just fulfilling your family's wants or needs when you shop or dine out. Think again. The choice of where you spend your money makes a big difference to your community. Spending your money with locally-owned independent businesses puts your money to work directly helping your community's economy?just one way your community benefits from its home town businesses. Those businesses use goods and services of other locally-owned independent businesses--circulating your money three to three-and-a-half times longer locally than if you spend it at a chain*. This creates greater community health and prosperity.
During the 1990s, downtown population grew by 10 percent, a marked resurgence following 20 years of overall decline.
From 1970 to 2000, the number of downtown households increased 8 percent—13 percent in the 1990s alone—and their composition shifted.
Downtown homeownership rates more than doubled during the thirty-year period, reaching 22 percent by 2000.
In general, downtowns boast a higher percentage of both young adults and college-educated residents than the nation's cities and suburbs.
The demolition has begun on the Spiess building. It will be replaced by the Fountain Square on the River, a 280,000-square-foot project with 204 units including one-, two- or three-bedroom condominium units as well as duplexes and townhouses. The project includes 15,000 feet of retail space. See the Courier News article.
Veterans Day CeremonySteve Stroud will present a slide show featuring photos from his recently published historic Elgin house book, “There Used to Be …” and photos from his already eagerly anticipated second volume. Anyone interested in seeing historic photos of Elgin’s great old houses is invited to come. He will have books to sell and autograph.
F9
This parcel's high visibility from the Highland Avenue bridge, Walton Island and the Civic Center/Cultural Campus demands that the building be more aesthetic and less of a wall blocking the views from the west side. Temporary artwork placed on the east façade could work into a cultural theme of the Civic/Cultural Campus, with long term replacement of the building with a more human scale architecture a long-term goal. A walkway along the water's edge linking Highland Avenue to Kimball Avenue or Foundry Park would continue the riverwalk north to Judson College. A canoe chute/fish ladder on the west bank would create a longer stretch of navigable water in Elgin.
R13
Lipton Industries is a valuable corporate member of the community that would benefit by relocating to a more appropriate industrial site that enhances their business development plan. The City and Lipton should begin to negotiate a transition process that would allow redevelopment of this site in a 3 - 5 year time frame. Redevelopment site uses should be flexible to take advantage of unforeseen market opportunities to capture corporate, residential or commercial uses that would benefit from a high visibility site on the Fox River in the heart of downtown. Parking for the new site uses will need to be accommodated on site and partially in off-site areas.
“We know everybody wants it downtown and we want it to stay downtown,” said
Gouge, who has owned the business for about a year. “But we hope someone
buys it and loves it.” Daily Herald, September 8, 2005
Students from Judson College use downtown Elgin as a classroom on Thursday afternoon. Professor Christopher Miller brought his Architecture of Cities class down to experience the historic and diverse architecture that is downtown Elgin.
There's a Southeast Asian Water Festival in Lowell, Mass, which features traditional boat races. The festival is expected to draw 50,000 to 60,000 visitors to Lowell's Merrimack River each year, a celebration of the river as a God in Southeast Asian culture.Imagine bringing 50-60,000 people to downtown Elgin for something similar. The Lao community here can be joined by Thai, Cambodian and other communities in Chicagoland to host this event. This could be a good way to highlight Elgin's diversity and deliver traffic to downtown businesses. It would also highlight the downtown and especially the riverfront's revitalization.
Wikipedia entry on dragon boats. I also found swan boats and long boats.
What do you think?
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