Historic District House Walk | Elgin IL
No. Sorry… This is not a historic district walking tour of Beloit. Though in time we’d love to host one.
This is though, to my mind the single best run and enjoyable historic district house walk I’ve attended. And we’ve attended quite a few as it’s something we particularly enjoy doing.
The Elgin Historic District House Walk
Sat/Sun Sept. 10-11
Among the great things about this house walk is that it’s not all about grand mansions. You’ll see that the homes open and available to tour are more mainstream, middle-class homes. They illustrate what is do-able with regular folks homes who don’t live in mansions. You may get a glimpse into what potential your own home may have. This is the 30th annual house walk. And Elgin has worked out how to put on a show. You will have a wonderful time.
I mention this as Ana and I will be attending Sunday the 11th. We don’t generally make personal appeals on the website here but we’ll be going and would love to have you join us. The more the merrier. Yes?
As we used to live in that area we’ve a few friends down there and would welcome the opportunity to make some introductions. It’s good to have like-minded friends & acquaintances who can share what worked for them… what did not. While it’s a larger city and there are differences between our communities we do share many community & neighborhood dynamics and characteristics.
At any rate, The Gifford Park Association is the long standing neighborhood organization that has made dramatic changes to their community with regard to their historic districts and surrounding “vintage” neighborhoods. They’re worth knowing about.
We’d love some company joining us to attend the house walk. Let us know.
Rick-n-Ana
rickmcgrath2.0@gmail.com
847-431-0710
Harris Ace Hardware | Riverside Park Beloit
Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011 10:15 am GMT +6 by RickM
Filed under Neighborhood Discussion
Don’t know how long Harris Ace Hardware had been at the 1034 Pleasant Street location above but I understand the pic on the left is from the 40′s. As buildings evolve over time, at some point they enclosed the east facing front of the store, bought up the house lots to the left for a parking lot and moved the entrance to the south side of the building. Just a few years ago they moved from this location all together and a win-win for them and the community.
Beloit too has evolved from using the river system to serve the purpose of transport and back-door industrial waste disposal…. as was common practice. Having proactively reclaimed the riverfront it’s now a very popular and much used recreation and park space. Very much now the front door. The transformation is nothing but remarkable. The “after” pic is not great. It’s primarily purpose is just to show before/after. It’s not really close enough to do justice to what’s been done with the park area. You’ll just have to see for yourself. Or check out Old Onliner’s Pics.
And what about Harris Ace Hardware? 
Well, they’re doing just fine as well. They too have evolved moving their long-standing downtown Beloit presence even closer to downtown into their new building at 430 Broad Street. (We love our downtown Beloit merchants. They’re walking/biking distance from the historic districts.)
Great American Main Streets Award Winner 2011 | Beloit WI
Sunday, June 5th, 2011 10:38 pm GMT +6 by RickM
Filed under City of Beloit, Neighborhood Discussion
We, Ana and I had the opportunity to attend this years national Main Streets conference held in Des Moines a couple weeks ago. While it was a great conference with much to talk about I’ll mention just two.
First… Downtown Beloit Wisconsin | Great American Main Streets Award Winner for 2011!
There are literally thousands of participating community downtowns across the country and thirty six here in Wisconsin alone. Each year the National Trust For Historic Preservation’s Main Street Program recognizes just five communities for this recognition. The National Trust and Main Street use this opportunity to recognize the exemplary work of community downtowns who are getting it right, tell their stories and serve as an example for other communities. While they consider many individual factors in general what they look for is…
- Sustained, long-term effort. Indeed, Beloit has not exhibited some single isolated grand effort but rather has demonstrated repeatedly and over many years that this is an ongoing and concerted effort that has resulted in example after example of how Beloit’s downtown has been reinvesting and renewing it’s historic downtown. These examples are numerous, obvious and touched on here on this website and elsewhere.
- Breadth of initiatives, participation and successes. As opposed to more narrow focused, single pet-project initiatives, has the community exhibited broad ranging projects and community involvement. And here again, Beloit has demonstrated a willingness to address a broad gamut of needs to revitalize it’s downtown. So while the DBA (Downtown Business Association) has led the charge there is considerable support by city government and broad ranging civic groups and community members in making positive changes. Further, downtown improvements have spanned infrastructure redevelopment, communications and downtown organizations development, merchant and public programs development, inter-agency cooperation and much more.
Congratulations to Kathleen Bratz, (dir. of DBA), the individual downtown business owners, the neighbors and broader community that shop and hang out in our increasingly cool and vibrant, historic, center-city downtown.
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Secondly… Sustainability, downtowns and changing consumer trends.
The National Main Streets Conference was two weeks ago in Des Moines. Opening keynote, Ed McMahon (Senior Fellow for the Urban Land Institute) gave a wonderful presentation on sustainability, our downtowns and current shifts in consumer trends, public policy etc.
(go to time stamp 01:28:00 to see Mr. McMahon’s presentation)
