About this entry

You’re currently reading “the view (blocked) from the road (after & before),” an entry on N.B.Coop News

Published:
11.08.09 / 11pm
Category:
Coop News

the view (blocked) from the road (after & before)

THE VIEW (BLOCKED) FROM THE ROAD

(After & Before)
By
The Local Correspondent

You have to see it to believe it. Which is what this news item from NBCoop today is all about.

Many of us (residents and tourists alike) traveling south down Highway 42. see it all too often and are sick of the sight. What’s been pushed, ‘billboard-ed” in our face. What we’re forced to look at, when we know what once was there: another, potential, million-dollar view of the county. Now, alas, gone the way of condo craziness, developer’s desire: “Me first! Screw you! And Door County.”

It’s an old story. This is my 40th anniversary of living in the county and in all those years I’ve been watching it slowly picked apart. Gobbled up. “Disappeared.” Of course there’s no stopping it–except for certain individuals and organizations like the Door County Land Trust, with hearts and heads in the right place. Everything gets worse, as some sage once said. It does. Yes it does.

I addressed this issue before, almost two years ago, January, 2008 (see www.bleidoorcountytimes.com, “Blei/At Large”, check Archives, open “An Offering”). The view of Sister Bay I was defending (proposing…pleading for preservation) has by now been erased—replaced by the in-your-face reality in the accompanying photo—the continued “March of the Condos” across the Door landscape. Merrily We Roll Along. Well, maybe not so merrily in these economic times. And while many of them remain empty, I don’t see any of these selfish structures removed, the view restored ‘for the greater good.”

I could go into a long essay, a rabble-rousing rant—but what’s the use? I’ve devoted a considerable amount of my Door County writing to the issue. Even had some fun at it, and modicum of minor celebrity. But what’s the use? The condos keep marching toward the shoreline, the McMansions continue to secure, eat-up the rural interior (and wave banners “Don’t Tread on Me”). And a few of us are pleased with our view and four-car garage; some of us are pissed-off, remembering the way we were; and most of us don’t have time or care to think about it too much. It’s hard enough to pay the bills, find work.

I don’t know what Sister Bay/Liberty Grove was thinking when they allowed this to happen to the old Liberty Park Lodge and that beautiful shoreline. I don’t know the hieroglyphics of zoning or the skullduggery of local politics. But this seems to me a huge mistake. Another sad commentary on greed over the common good, the common view. CAUTION: There’s another foundation to the right of the present obstruction, which should pretty much shut the door in the face of everybody but the condo people..

They say a picture is worth a thousand words.

I’ve written only 483 of them.

Here’s the picture:

.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.