Sprawled Out: The Search for Community in the American Suburb

Shoppes of Wyndham Village, in Franklin, faces foreclosure - JSOnline

Well. Maybe we saw this coming.

The Shoppes of Wyndham Village, a Franklin shopping center anchored by a Pick 'n Save supermarket and a Target store, is facing a foreclosure suit.

SBI General Portfolio Owner LLC's suit, filed in Milwaukee County Circuit Court, names shopping center owner Wyndham Village Retail LLC and developer Mark Carstensen as defendants. A receiver has been appointed to operate the property, according to online court records.

I haven't been able to review the court file yet. Reporter Sean Ryan's story in the Milwaukee Business Journal says Wyndham Village Retail defaulted on a $19 million loan.

Carstensen didn't return a phone message seeking comment.

Wyndham Village, at the southeast corner of Highway 100 and Drexel Ave., saw its Sendik's supermarket anchor close in July 2009, about a year after it opened. A Pick 'n Save opened in the former Sendik's space in November 2009.

The 248,076-square-foot Wyndham Village has around 22,200 square feet availabe for lease, according to property listing service Loopnet.com, along with undeveloped land.

The shopping center was opposed by nearby residents who wanted more upscale retailers, and by other critics who said its design was a missed opportunity to create a pedestrian-friendly development.

Last year, in a separate suit, a vacant parcel planned for expansion of another Franklin retail center, Fountains of Franklin, went into foreclosure. However, that action didn't involve the existing Fountains of Franklin, which is anchored by a separately owned Sendik's Food Market, at 5200 W. Rawson Ave.

More later, obviously.

Read the rest at: Shoppes of Wyndham Village, in Franklin, faces foreclosure - JSOnline

In effort to foster civility, officials ask input on cuts

If there is one constant in local politics, it's that citizens seem to love being indignant -- about snow plows and the quality of said snow plowers, property taxes, and.... I guess that's about it. Snow plows and property taxes.

And they aren't good at math, but that's a different story.

Stumbled upon this while reading USA TODAY at a coffee shop:

The string of attacks on politicians — angry shouts at town-hall-style meetings, an assassination attempt against Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords — has ignited a civility movement in cities across the country.

Officials in large and small cities are eager to calm the overheated rhetoric that has dominated the political landscape. At a time when tight budgets are forcing them to make unpopular cuts in services, city leaders want to learn how they can have a cordial discourse with constituents and, better yet, get them to help decide what cuts to make.

...

In 2009, protesters shouted down members of Congress who held forums on a proposed health care overhaul. That same year, Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., shouted "You lie!" after President Obama, in an address to Congress, denied that health care legislation would provide free coverage for illegal immigrants.

And some saw a connection last month after a gunman shot Giffords, D-Ariz., in the forehead when she met with constituents at her "Congress on Your Corner" event at a Tucson supermarket. Six people, including a 9-year-old girl and a federal judge, were killed. Giffords is recovering.

(Via - USATODAY.com)

Rural post offices put on notice in face of DIY digital age

My local Post Office seems to be hanging on by a thread. We get our mail at about 4:30pm most days, and the handy-dandy auto-postage machine has been taken out of the our location in favor of a more prestigious P.O.

Of course, the Franklin Post Office is located, like everything else here, near NOTHING. Losing traffic to the Post Office would be meaningless to local commerce.

However...

The prospect of losing a post office is alarming people in small towns everywhere. The post office gives area residents a reason to come to town — and patronize other businesses there — and provides a service they count on and believe their government owes them.

(Via USATODAY.com)

Urban Development Strategies From 1939

A blast from the past from Coronet Instructional Films (score by Aaron Copeland!) shows us the scourge of the city -- from which the suburbs were designed to deliver us.

In 1939 the American Institute of Planners commissioned a film for the 1939 New York World's Fair. The result was The City, a film about the historic importance of rural, small town life in America, the evils of the city that had developed as America industrialized, and the possibility of reclaiming the "good life" through suburban housing initiatives.  You can see the complete film here.

(I was surprised to see in the credits Pare Lorentz the groundbreaking documentarian who made the film The Plow That Broke the Plains and The River, which told that story of the great rivers of the American continent and the work of the Tennessee Valley Authority.) 

via The Atlantic

UPDATE: City to Legitimize Mystery Stop Signs,

Just go with it: Update to "Mystery Stop Signs" post from last November - 

A city official said they believed that the mystery signs had been put up by "housing developments over the years" that had not followed the right protocol to codify the signs. Translation: they have no idea. I prefer to think that they all just appeared one night, like crop circles, and so that's the explanation I'm going with.

Read the rest at: UPDATE: City to Legitimize Mystery Stop Signs, Report Says - Lowering the Bar

UPDATED: Snowpocalypse 2011 - Snowplow warriors

My daughter caught me attempting to come to a nonverbal understanding with the city snowplow driver. Did he read my story in Milwaukee Magazine about how hard it is to plow cul-de-sacs?

UPDATE:

The City of Franklin did an excellent job clearing my cul-de-sac yesterday -- including some precision work inches from the mailboxes and fireplugs without inflicting any damage. (The crew also had to deal with one of my neighbors coming out to complain that too much snow was being dumped on her property.)

The two-man, two-truck crew spent a total of 38 minutes in my cul-de-sac: Franklin has 211 cul-de-sacs. You do the math, as they say.