What History? Sims will come down one day and the rest of it is lost, don't waste the money!

My answer is NO to taxpayer dollars being used to rehab signage for private property.
The 07July09 Daily Herald reported a figure of $20,000 that the City of DesPlaines offered to the new business owners of the Sugar Bowl to rehab the sign for them.
If the Sugar Bowl property owner and the current Sugar Bowl business owner want to keep the current Sugar Bowl sign ( the Daily Hearld stated they did not) then how about:
1) The Sugar Bowl property owner AND business owner splitting the rehab cost between themesleves ? or,
2) The property owner & business owner start a "Save The Sugar Bowl Sign" fund where people can contribute money to the cause.
3) Get the DesPlaines Historical Society and Chamber Of Commerce to assist in anyway they can.
4) Take the $20,000 and put it in the Police & Fire Pension Fund or does the City of DesPlaines need the money to buy Sims Bowling Alley in order to save their sign ?
Don't get me wrong here, people definitely identify DesPlaines with the Des Plaines Theatre;Sugar Bowl;Sims Bowling Alley and The Choo-Choo restaurant signs. They are all iconic signs,like the Superdawg sign in Chicago. I love them all. The Choo-Choo Restaurant business owner seems to keep the building in repair,and it is the only location of the four pulling hundreds of OUT OF TOWN people into DesPlaines on a weekly basis, and yet past newspaper reports claim the City Of DesPlaines wants ownership of this parcel of land for redevelopment.The Des Plaines Theatre is a visual eyesore and a dump;Sims Bowl is closed for business; let's hope the Sugar Bowl makes it this time around.
5) Get a new Director Of Community and Economic Development who is in touch with reality.

This is a very valid concern, and one that deserves consideration. In my opinion, the city definitely should spend money to rehabilitate Miner Street.

The city has long spent money to attract business, particularly in the form of tax breaks, land acquisition and write-down (making developer costs similar to those encountered in a cornfield). These incentives can generally only apply to new construction and new business. Where is the incentive for dedicated, long-time contributors to our city?

Further, the downtown merchants have been forced to bear much of the pressures of redevelopment. In the sixties, it was the downtown that lost business as new centers were opened on the Lee and Oakton corridors, and surrounding communities. It was Miner Street that suffered when the Behrel garage went up and many businesses migrated to, and then failed in, the Des Plaines mall. It was Miner Street that suffered when it went into a TIF district - why invest money into a building when you don't know if the city will tear it down?

Most directly, Miner street suffered when Metropolitan Square was built. The businesses lost their convenient parking lot - maybe the only major concession made to them. They lost the landscaped park that offered easy access. They lost a number of on-street parking spaces when the driveway to Metropolitan Square was built, and more when the bus stop was relocated. Their businesses lost visibility with the overly large streetscaping trees. They had to endure the long construction disruption of Metro Square, and then had to face more competition when those stores opened, without getting any facility upgrades themselves. And perhaps most of all, they have faced skyrocketing taxes as a result of this new construction.

And those skyrocketing taxes have gone directly into the TIF district. So why does it not make sense to use the TIF funding for what it's for, and reward these long-standing contributors to our city's character and vitality? These storefronts have become blighted, and we need to reverse that. This is good for Metropolitan Square, too - if we make an appealing front door to that development, it will have a better chance of succeeding.

When it comes down to it, Downtown is the face of Des Plaines, we have the TIF in place to make sure it is well-maintained and appealing, and it isn't, yet. The least expensive way to achieve that goal is to do what the city can to implement the recommendations in the city's own Comprehensive Plan, Design Guidelines, and Parking Study - this is what TIF is to be used for, not police stations.

It's nice to know that we can pass a 1% budget, tell citizens we are broke, fire 5 or 6 employees to make a budget. And now we can FOOLISHLY spend money on stupid stuff like this. 95% of our history has already been torn down and is gone, gone forever and now its important. Cheez, here we go again. Guess with all the new Aldermen that talked a good game before elections forgot all that and we are back to the land of the lost once again!

DesPlaines is a joke, just like the Sugar Bowl! Spend all of that money so that the owner (Ted) can retain the stupid sign? Who cares about a sign on a business that can't even sustain itself? This just proves what a bunch of idiots the people of DesPlaines are!!