[Winona Online Democracy]
On Apr 20, 2006, at 13:46, c.e.w. wrote:
[Winona Online Democracy]
Intersting little fit of anger against our Mayor and City Council
members, personally I think they have done a fine job of advancing
Winona and the surrounding community into the 21st century. Winona is
a bustling and growing community that, steered in the right direction,
will continue to be the gem on the river that it truly is. Your
dissatisfaction with the direction this community has been going in
the past 10 years is, in my opinion, unfounded.
I find it interesting you claim they have been doing great yet you
decline to name one item in support of your claim of how great the
council and mayor are. It is also interesting that your response to my
indictment against the council and mayor is to ignore the problems
cited. Let me guess, none of those issues cited are important?
I am however, very dissapointed that we, as a community, continue to
completely ignore the discretionary income that floats through our
no-wake zone every day. We have absolutely NO restaurants/bars on the
waterfront to attract these boaters into our beautiful town, the fact
that a pizza chain sits in the only waterfront restaurant is an
absolute black eye on our community and is something we should be
ashamed of. I strongly encourage our city council members to please
spend an afternoon in Stillwater, Lake City, Wabasha..there is
constant activity, restaurants are full, people are strolling and
shopping...where are they coming from? they are stepping off of there
boats and exploring the beautiful river towns..they are spending $$$$.
Our two marinas are woefully inadequete and are sorely mismanaged.
Also,great thinking on extending the lease on Dicks marine...God
forbid we have a developer come in there and add more slips, put a
restaurant hotel in there and generate some tourism dollars for this
town, instead we gave them another 15 yrs to do nothing but increase
the slip fees and add nothing to the property...did ANYBODY else get
an opportunity to bid on the management of the marina? no...and I dont
know how that happens here,WE the citizens of Winona own that marina,
we need to improve it and it isnt being done, instead we sentenced
ourselves to another 15yrs of wasteful use of one of our communites
more valuable resources.
Fix that marina? On my list of things to fix in this town, at least
97,000 items rank ahead of that.
A pizza place on the river is something to be ashamed of... How? The
city wasting money suing the porn store repeatedly is shameful. A pizza
place on the river, what is shameful about that brilliant
entrepreneurship? If Winona is a missing an opportunity, why has
someone not privately already tried to fill that void?
So your grand plan is to enhance the marina area to bring tourists into
downtown. Ok, 1) What percent of the boats on the river originate
outside the Winona area? 2) Of that seemingly small percent of
non-Winona* region boats on the river, what percent of the non-Winona
boats already stop in Winona? 3) What percent of those already passing
through would stop in Winona instead of another location if Winona had
more riverfront restaurants?
This is trying extracting from a small pool of potential users and
cannot pay for itself within any timeframe. A medium sized wedding
would bring more people into Winona than the number of persons this
would appeal to.
If the Council wants to really leave a legacy for Winona, they need
to come up with a development plan for the waterfront that would
include expansion of marinas, retail/restaurant development on the
waterfront, some residential/retail mix on the waterfront (imagine
some nice condos on the river with docks spaces and such...wouldnt
that be a nice addition to the Winona riverfront?). We have a top
notch art museum being built for us( Thank you Mr. Kierlin, you are
truly an asset to our community), lets build something around it and
embrace the waterfront as more than just a place to go for the pizza
buffet, lets make it what fills up the downtown with tourists spending
$$ and having fun. I encourage any and all of you to spend one day in
any of several river towns to the north and south of us..we are
overlooking some major dollars and it is a shame that we are being so
ignorant of this.
c.e. woodford
********************************************
David Dittmann
_______________________________________________
This message was posted to Winona Online Democracy
All messages must be signed by the senders actual name.
No commercial solicitations are allowed on this list.
To manage your subscription or view the message archives, please visit
http://mapnp.mnforum.org/mailman/listinfo/winona
Any problems or suggestions can be directed to
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
If you want help on how to contact elected officials, go to the Contact page at
http://www.winonaonlinedemocracy.org
