These opinions are my own and you're welcome to them

Striding the border between Illinois and Wisconsin, embodying and delineating what we can truly say call the "stateline" is this rusty, neglected, and long-closed bridge. Is this something worth saving and using? An asset or a liability? Useful or scrap?

Seen from the south (Illinois) side:


Seen from the north (Wisconsin) side:


Looks pretty bad, huh? Pretty scary, right? It's a harbor for the homeless and youth gangs. Full of broken glass and metal.



Looking south (Illinois) on east side of bridge:


Looking north (Wisconsin) on east side of bridge:


I want to make this my next "project" -- to see to it that this old bridge gets rehabilitated into a useful pedestrian and bicycle roadway. Note I said "rehabilitated" meaning it's not torn down and replaced, but restored to a safe, working bridge while maintaining its rusty, crusty, old-iron and steel character.

Pretty grim stuff.

Lots of people would have us employ resources to stop the scourge of cancer, end child abuse, and hundreds of other worthy causes, so who cares about a rusty old bridge that most people don't even know exists?

But beauty is there, just waiting to be seen.

Looking west from the center of the bridge:


As I understand it, the actual border is on the Wisconsin side of the north entrance. That means a majority of the responsibility for any restoration project will rely on the vagaries of politics on the often bizarre, and always confusing, South Beloit City Council. (On the bright side, at least it's not the Town of Beloit.)

Lost cause? Not worth it? Great potential? What do you think? Want to help?

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"A park so awesome it's worth mentioning thrice! I count 3 signs within sight of each other. Now, I love this park as much as anyone, but I do NOT love the excessive signage detracting from the view, ruining what is otherwise a great photo place. Absurd."



Click through to the photo to see the notes on each of the three signs.

Maybe only someone wanting a good photograph would care... because an artist painting the scene can always leave the signs out of the painting! Then again, there's always Photoshop ... hmmm...

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Someone trimmed the awesome tree in Riverside Park. The beautifully shaped odd one, that everyone paints and photographs, along the bank, next to the tennis courts.

This is outrageous! How was this allowed to happen? Who thought this was a good idea? Couldn't someone have a put sign on it saying, "DO NOT TRIM"?

Also posted on Facebook. As seen before - reference photos:












By Beloit City Councilor, Heidi Johns:




A watercolor painting by Sherry Thurner:

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The first screen shot is an overlay of the original and the revised parking lot with my comments as follows.

As an all-or-nothing proposal both of these stink, so how 'bout we consider another compromise? Premise: Design BOTH the road AND the parking lot to have the least impact on the existing park space. And that premise means you don't put it here!



The best location is just north of the area shown in the overlay drawing, just out of frame to the right. It can't be that hard to secure space on the east side for widening. ("For the consideration of $1..." comes to mind here.)



I don't understand why this isn't being considered and pushed from City staff and citizens. Or is it and we just don't hear about it?

Just saying "no" is not compromise and will not help make it easy for public use and enjoyment of the park. This "quiet end" of the park needs some kind of public access (read: "parking").

As shown on this annotated aerial photo from Bing there's plenty of space on the east side of the road to widen it, reducing the impact on existing park space. And there's a place just north of the proposed area that makes a much better location for a parking lot. This assumes two things - the east side space gets more used than as proposed (where it's not used at all on any designs I've seen) and the space gained on the west is used to preserve park space and help provide space for the parking area.



This is a FEDERAL HIGHWAY and the Fed is PAYING for it. For the construction to include replacing parking along Highway 51, the lots must be built when the highway is built. This is NOT using local tax dollars, it's not even using State tax dollars!

Let's do it now and let's do it right. (Or as right as we can make it.)

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Detail engineering drawing overlaid on air photo. This is pretty close to reality as designed. The revised version of this is not supposed to have the walking/bike path through the parking lot, instead it will continue using the existing path. That means the lot will not be as deep and not encroach into the park as much. There was also some talk of increasing the angle of the diagonal parking, losing a couple of parking spaces and thereby further reducing the depth of the lot.

I suggested the 10 foot stand off buffer between street and parking lot be reduced, but was told that was required by code and the space allows for snow piles when plowing road to not encroach into the parking lot. I still suggested, that in this case - where the area is so narrow - that a variance be requested to reduce the buffer to something like 5 or 6 feet. Gaining even a yard (3 feet) in such a confined space is worth the trouble. Since this isn't a commercial area, but park land, I thought "preservation of green space" an adequate need to justify a minor variance.

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