Andrew Steele: Week in Review commentary

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There’s some serious demolition work going on at the “old factory” complex on the northwest corner of Indiana Avenue and North Street.

That’s a welcome sign at what has long been a pretty desolate intersection. Even when there’s been an improvement — a new building on the southwest corner — there seems to be a nearly simultaneous decline — the owners of the old greenhouse property allowing it to return to nature.

It seems that that should be a good intersection for some sort of business development, although “business development” these days generally means a strip mall, which isn’t necessarily an uplifting thought.

One sure sign that spring will get here, eventually, comes when the city starts handing out various licenses and permits for outdoor vending. Recently, it was the turn of hot dog vendors.

As in the past, one will be on the southeast corner of the square; one on the northwest corner. They won’t be the same vendors as in the past, though — Madalyn, who started it all a couple decades ago (and was always my favorite) won’t be back.

She was off, then on, then off again in recent years, and “her” corner has been assigned to someone else, even though she’d apparently like to be back this year.

I think there’s plenty of room for all of them, and maybe a couple more, to duke it out and see who’s left at the end of the summer. There’s so much traffic around the square anyway, another vendor or two won’t ruin the ambience.

There was a Quickly comment we received at the Post-Tribune opposing the city’s decision on this that I didn’t use because it was full of misunderstandings, but one part of it made me laugh:

“It just shows they’ve got no loyalty to nothing except that damn old jail that hasn’t brought a dime to this city.”

The old jail, of course, is owned by a private foundation and not the city, and has, in fact, brought a dime or two into the city, but the comment raises the point that the jail always seems to be in a state of becoming something, but it’s not entirely clear what.

It definitely seems worth saving, but doesn’t seem to be the charitable draw that the old courthouse has been. I know there has been, and continues to be, much work and planning going on, and I know the movie filming brought a large amount of renovation work and notoriety, but it never seems to get out of the limbo it’s seemed to be in as long as I can remember.

There would ideally be one not-for-profit foundation to manage all the historic buildings downtown. That might bring better focus to fundraising and discussing what we want to save, and how we want to save it.

That’s probably not realistic, but with the courthouse, the sheriff’s house and jail, the old homestead, and other buildings (the Carnegie Center, for one) coming into question from time to time, a consolidated approach to financing and priority-setting might work better than what we have.