Title: PACA Membership & Volunteer Recognition Party
Location: Salvage Warehouse – 44 E. Washington, C
Description: Annual PACA party to celebrate our great members and volunteers. Food, drink, and music provided. Come and meet and celebrate with our wonderful PACA volunteers and members! Open to all.
Start Time: 4:00
Date: 2010-10-30

PACA has thousands of street and sidewalk pavers (bricks) for sale. This is the fifth year for our brick salvage project, under the direction of Bob Swisher, and there is no end in sight for the availability of pavers. This year, 2010, both street and sidewalk pavers are coming from the City of Urbana, which has donated them to PACA for recycling.

Pavers will be available starting September 4, weather permitting, until winter.

Contact PACA, 359-7222 for more information. Buyers must load their own pavers; no folk lifts allowed.

Street Pavers

Some are marked (Western, Clinton, Danville, Midwest, Paver Block (none are collectible)

Sidewalk Pavers, All plain

This is the fifth year for PACA’s Paver Project. To date, over $42,000 has been realized from the efforts of our volunteers to sort and stack pavers. Kraft Foods has graciously donated over 100 plastic pallets that have made the job much easier. Champaign County Public Service workers and PACA volunteers have supplied the labor for this project, under the direction of Bob Swisher.

The administration is asking the current Board of Trustees to rescind the resolution passed last year that keeps Mumford House on its current site and to give all decision making concerning the house back to the administration, which will probably mean Mumford House’s demolition. Their reason is the financial condition of the University of Illinois and the cost of rehabilitation. However, neither the rehabilitation costs have been made public – possibly around $3 million – confirmed by the News-Gazette article on May 11, describing the Mumford House rehab ‘not practical or feasible or even prudent’ nor has the architect’s report on the building and reuse plan about an actual rehabilitation cost).

In actuality, the current, 2009, the Board of Trustees resolution does not mention rehabilitating the house immediately (or, in fact, at all). It just requires the house to remain on site and directs that a plan for its use be done. That is all. Neither does it not give a timetable for rehabilitation nor the use of UI funds. Therefore, we are asking that the resolution stand and that the house be “mothballed” until financial conditions improve. A Mumford House Foundation could be established to fund raise for the rehabilitation – something that the UI has not bothered to form.

Shoppers crowded the sidewalks, stores featured elegant interiors and elaborate window displays, and Robeson’s restaurant served the best pie in town. Look back at the glory days of downtown Champaign department stores, including Kuhn’s.

Host John Paul talks to Kyle Robeson, grandson of the founder of Robeson’s, and Gordon Tracy, general manager at Joseph Kuhn’s. Robeson describes how his grandfather started the store, the rooftop music and dances there during the big band era, and the fabulous cooks who worked at the store restaurant. “We had the best pies in town,” he says. Kyle Robeson said he never knew what was in the other downtown stores. His father wouldn’t let his son go inside the competitors’ businesses.

On May 27, Illinois Pioneers looks the days when downtown Champaign was filled with as many as 22 theaters.

Funding for Illinois Pioneers is made possible, in part, by The Noel Foundation, by donors to the Champaign 150th Anniversary Celebration Fund, and by the Office of Corporate Relations at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Illinois Pioneers
7:30 pm Thursday on WILL-TV

[Source: Illinois Public Media website; http://will.illinois.edu/site/headline/the-heydey-of-department-stores/]

The Historic Champaign County: Neighborhoods and Homes digital collection is now available online. It depicts multiple photographs from the Champaign County Historical Archives and architectural surveys from the 1980′s of homes in Champaign and Urbana from the Preservation and Conservation Association (PACA).

The collection includes searchable documentation, including newsletters of PACA from 1981 to 2007. If help is needed to navigate the collection, please refer to search functions.

As of May 8, 2010, no final decision will be made at this month’s meeting. At the last public study session meeting a possibility of a compromise design was raised and members of the board would like to see more renderings and materials to consider a third option.

Please, visit Josh McNattin’s post on Facebook for more information, Support Keeping the Virginia Theatre Marquee.

New Survey for those who’ve previously responded and wish to amend their response…

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TNPH7X5

Original Survey for those who have not yet responded…

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WQ39L6X

Some of the world’s richest farmland is at risk by a planned extension of Olympian Drive from Market Street in Champaign to Route 45 north of Urbana.  85 acres could be lost to the road itself and 1,600 acres to industrial uses.  The purpose of the extension is to provide connectivity between I-57 and Route 45, just 1 mile north of I-74.

Cost estimates vary but, the County officials expect at least $30M.  Contributions will be required of Champaign & Urbana ($5-6M), Champaign County, the State of Illinois ($5M), and Federal funds ($8-10M).  The project is being sold to promote economic development while hundreds of acres of developable land in the county is available without disturbing active agriculture.

A delegation of 18 public officials and business interests recently visited Washington D.C. to lobby for the federal funds.

Please sign the petition on line: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/stopolympiandrive/

Become a Facebook fan: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Stop-Olympian-Drive-Group/362486134343?filter=2

Please contact these elected officials before March 15 and ask them to say NO to the Olympian Drive expansion:

CHAMPAIGN COUNTY BOARD MEMBERS

URBANA CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS

CHAMPAIGN CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS

FEDERAL REPRESENTATIVES

Ask them to say NO to Olympian Drive. Tell them that

An Alert From Preservation Action

In a major blow to our nation’s federal historic preservation program, the President’s budget, released on Monday of this week, requested the elimination of both the Save America’s Treasures (SAT) and Preserve America (PA) programs – representing a $25 million cut to the Historic Preservation Fund (HPF).  An Action Alert can be viewed here.

In the termination language that accompanied the budget, it was stated that the “SAT and PA programs have not demonstrated how they contribute to nationwide historic preservation goals.”  Further, it was suggested that elimination of these programs would enable the National Park Service to “focus resources on managing national parks and other activities that most closely align with its core mission.” 

Funding for Heritage Areas was also cut by $9 million.  Once again, the White House justified this cut by citing the need for the National Park Service to focus on “national parks and lack of management,” which further suggests that the Administration believes the management of cultural resources is not in line with the NPS’s core mission.

At the same time the President severely cut historic preservation programs, he increased the funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) to $620 million, and stated his intention to seek full funding (at $900 million) by 2014.  The LWCF and HPF, considered “sister funds,” both receive their annual deposits from outer-continental shelf oil and gas drilling leases.  Unlike the HPF, which funds a variety of programs that focus on cultural resources, the LWCF’s primary purpose is to acquire land and provide for park maintenance.

The preference the administration is showing towards natural resources versus cultural resources, rather than a comprehensive approach which reflects the complete mission of the National Park Service is cause for concern. 

In the coming weeks, it is essential that you contact your members of congress to let them know that cultural resources and natural resources are of equal importance.  With the administration’s current focus on job creation and economic development, it will be critical to our effort to link historic preservation to these important goals.

Senator Dick Durbin (D)
309 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: (202) 224-2152         (202) 224-2152
Fax: (202) 228-0400

Website: http://durbin.senate.gov/
Contact Form: http://durbin.senate.gov/sitepages/contact.htm

Senator Roland Burris (D)
523 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
Phone: (202) 224-2854         (202) 224-2854
Fax: (202) 228-5417

Website: http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/senators/one_item_and_teasers/burris.htm
Contact Form: Email: Senator_RolandBurris@Burris.Senate.Gov

Congressman Tim Johnson (R)
U.S. House of Representatives – 15th District
1229 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
Phone:  (202) 225-2371         (202) 225-2371
Fax: (202) 226-0791

2004 Fox Drive
Champaign, IL 61820
Phone: (217) 403-4690         (217) 403-4690
Fax: (217) 403-4691

Website: http://www.house.gov/timjohnson/
Contact Form: http://www.house.gov/timjohnson/contact/index.shtml