Government: August 2009 Archives

Like a Roman emperor, Waukegan Mayor Robert Sabonjian is offering the city's citizens bread and circuses to perhaps keep their minds busy with extracurricular activities. This at a time when the city's finances appear to be on shaky ground, to say the least. Not that a deficit budget and high-interest loans are any of his doing. He's cleaning up those messes.

Sabonjian suggested this week some sort of motorsports event --- a road race or circuit --- on city streets next year. Folks in his administration are meeting with folks who apparently can make this happen. Except for a few things, Mayor Bob has a sound plan.

Those few things happen to be what this economy has done to auto racing in the U.S., whether it be NASCAR, IndyCar or Grand Prix events. They're hurting, to say the least. Sponsor money has dried up, along with the evaporation of racing venues.

The Milwaukee Mile, aka the Rex Mays Classic, usually held at the Wisconsin State Fairgrounds in West Allis the weekend after the Indy 500, has been off the map for several years. The Detroit Grand Prix is DOA. The Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet hosted a NASCAR event earlier this summer and will do an IndyCar event later this month. To fill the stands for this race, promoters made sure race fans bought a package ticket to go with the NASCAR race.

It's a tough market out there for racing events and it also should be noted the schedules for race dates for major events certainly already have been set for 2010. Which Waukegan residents should be grateful.

Putting together a race which could draw thousands for a weekend, the logistics involved and closing city streets needs a bit more planning than a year, The Hound believes. This isn't Scoopin' Genesee, after all.

The Hound understands Mayor Bob's need for speed, but there's more important races to run at the present.

It would appear the Zion City Council has gotten themselves in a bit of a bind by rejecting a special-use permit for the Dungeon of Doom, a creepy haunted house set to open next month in the old Warwick Building of Deborah Avenue. It certainly would be a better tale if the building was once the Warlock Building, don't you think?

But such naming would never happen in Zion because the Warwick Building dates back to Alexander Dowie and the founding of Zion City, if The Hound recalls what the geezers were talking about the other day. One question for the good burghers of Zion, though: Why did you reject something you originally sought to lure into the city? Yes, before the city's religious leaders caught wind of the black magic being brought to Zion, the planning and zoning commission endorsed the Dungeon of Doom with a 5-to-1 vote. It was a conditional vote, meaning that officials would see how things went this fall and the promoters would have to come back next year for permanent approval.

Forsooth, the city's economic development commisson actually pursued the developers to bring the fright house to Zion, which may leave a gap in the City Council's rejection of the Dungeon of Doom. If the economic development commission was pursuing bringing this attraction into Zion to inject some zombie-like life into the Warwick Building, then The Hound would only conjure the mayor and members of the City Council had an inkling what was going on. Especially since the application was filed in April. Nobody raised red flags about demonic goings on back then.

Mayor Lane Harrison saying he was urging rejection of the special permit because of traffic and neighborhood concerns in a neighborhood once surrounded by traffic generated from the Warwick Building and the nearby nuclear plant rings hollow to The Hound. A good lawyer might have a nice argument that a contract had been entered into with the economic development folks reaching out to the dungeon's promoters. Then again, who knows?

One thing The Hound knows: If Six Flags was in Zion, there wouldn't be a Fright Fest this year --- or in eternity. Hope The Fielders don't have a bat night next year. Bats could be equated to Dracula and you know what could happen then: Boo!