The City Getting It Right – Street Lamps

Yeah, it’s old news. We’ve all seen the ‘vintage’ street lamps that have been going up as streets in the older neighborhoods get new sewer, utilities and general reconstruction. You’ve surely seen them on Harrison, Bluff, Wisconsin and elsewhere. What I wasn’t aware of though was that Church street was likewise upgraded though sans the vintage lamp posts. I understand that Church street was among the first to receive the infrastructure upgrade and reconstruction. This was done though under prior administration.

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New and Improved! The City Website – Historic Preservation

Drew Pennington our Community Planner and representative on the Landmarks Commission just informed me that the City website relative to Historic Preservation has just been updated. Can’t tell you how fantastic this is. Frankly it needed a lot of help. Drew’s really made it much more user friendly and there’s much more information now available that simply was not there or much to difficult to find. Check it out here.

You’ll see that you can access Agendas, Minutes, Staff reports, application for the COA, information on the three historic districts etc. Still outstanding is being able to link directly to the preservation ordinance so that homeowners living within the historic districts can read what it states. This is a known issue. Some legacy technical constraints currently make this impossible to do cleanly. Until this can be done you can get to it here.

Beloit Municipal Code > Chapter 32 HISTORIC PRESERVATION (You’ll need to click through to Chapter 32)

Additionally, I’m sure a printed copy can be made available upon request. Also, I’ll get some copies and have these available to pass out at our meetings.

All the same… Nicely done on the site improvements so far! They’re appreciated!

National Trust for Historic Preservation – Main Street Conf in Chicago

Just saw this… that the National Trust’s “Main Street” yearly conference is being held just down the street in Chicago, March 1-4. Wonder if representatives from our own down town will be in attendance?

Update: Just got word that the Downtown Beloit Association’s program coordinator, Crystal Buhmeyer will be attending. That’s great news!

Homes Slated for Demolition

There are currently nine homes slated for demolition, three of which while outside the registered historic districts are nearby. I don’t yet know enough about the circumstances and rationale but at this point I at least wanted to bring it to folks attention.
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845 Harrison

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2008 Downtown Beloit Holidazzle… Wow!

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Folks that know Ana-n-I know we gravitate to where the LIVE music is happening. And this year’s Holidazzle did not disappoint. Frankly there was more going on then we had time to enjoy and missed some great stuff. There was so much to take in. I love that we can enjoy this level of live entertainment right next door to the historic neighborhood. The shopping, the other special events, the running into friends as we walked from venue to venue was all great fun. I heard it was successful from the downtown merchant’s perspective as well. That too was good to hear.

Among other things we caught Lance Brown’s Group at Cafe’ Belwah. OMG… wow, they were great! We took note of when they’re going to be there again and will be sure to be there. I’ll update it onto our calendar shortly.

Afterwards we headed over to Suds O’Hanahan for The Bel-Cats.

We’ve seen them before, always enjoy them and try to catch them whenever we can. I was pained however to hear we’d missed the Gospel Bells from the Lighthouse Fellowship Church. They were performing just a block over at the Pleasant Street Coffeehouse. Matt Goodwin was sitting in with them as well. Ugh… I heard it was amazing. I’d have really liked to have experienced that. Oh well… next year.

The Buzz in Beloit

Just happened to see this on YouTube. I -think- this was produced by the folks over at Visit Beloit. I see it’s had a lot of views since posted roughly this time last year so it may be old news to some.

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Beloit Pics

Some of you may recognize some of Mark’s (OldOnliner’s) masterful photography work on this site. I really appreciate his pics of and around Beloit. I wish I could see things through his eyes. His sharing what he sees though I guess is the next best thing. Anyway, evidently he just posted this slide show and thought I’d just pass it along.

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