Editor’s Note
Back in the old days — that’s less than a decade and before there were such things as blogs and interactive conversations with readers — editors used to respond to their newspaper readers with an “editor’s note.” Sometimes it clarified a point made in a letter to the editor. Sometimes it offered a correction. Sometimes it was just a simple explanation. An editor’s note was a handful of sentences; maybe a four or five paragraphs. It was always a personal link between the editor and the reader. Only difference between it and today’s blog is the immediacy and the platform. Welcome to Editor’s Note.

Archive for November 3rd, 2009

Another curb cut

10 comments November 3rd, 2009

We are never going to learn, so I’d pretty much decided not to run on about this ever again, but then there was last Wednesday morning.

There it was, all bright, clean concrete. Another curb cut along the Rockford side of Riverside Boulevard. Oh, I understand why it’s there. The small retailers in the strip mall have been advertising for years that they’re hard to find, but be patient because they’re worth it. I guess they finally wore down the no curb cut enforcement folks. I don’t really blame the shop keepers. They’ve got to earn a living, too.

But another curb cut along a four-lane, sort-of-divided main road? Between the stoplights and the curb cuts, Loves Park and Rockford have turned East Riverside into another traffic and pedestrian nightmare.

By the early 1990s, East State Street was already a goner. But there was still hope for Perryville, Riverside and 173. We could have done the right things, from limited access frontage roads, sidewalks and pedestrian overpasses to timed (and limited) stoplights. But, no, everyone with a hammer got a green light and a curb cut.

I remember once challenging a major player in local development to “show everyone else what it means to develop retail space and do it environmentally responsibly so it blends into the neighborhoods.” He said he thought that was a fine idea — and promptly added more asphalt to another strip mall.

Same with a former Rockford mayor to whom I had complained about the zoning variances granted at the corners of Riverside and Mulford. City needs the cash, he said. Simple as that. And up went the “mountain” and an always-failing shopping center.

We say we want open, green space and responsible development. We’re lying to ourselves. Witness that Riverside curb cut.