Dunes Blog

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Lunacy.

That’s one word describes the plan. I’m an not in support of the closure of the Miller South Shore stop at all. I think it will be a terrible mistake that will hurt commuters and damage long term growth on the South Shore line. If anything the South Shore needs to be adding stations, not removing them.

This is just the latest attempt at building a Potemkin Village in downtown Gary. The logic behind closing the Miller Station is that it will force people to go to the new Gary Metro Center that’s being built by private developers. I want to know what the developers are smoking.

Do they really think that people will drive an extra 10-15 minutes to a new station, pay $3 a day to park, risk their car getting broken into or stolen just to take one for the team and support the new station? Nope, they most certainly will not. The current Gary Downtown South Shore station is underused and in perfectly good nick. The inconvenienced commuters will just drive over to Ogden Dunes South Shore stop, which is already at capacity or simply stop using the service all together, which is the last thing the South Shore needs while it’s trying to gain funding for it’s Valpariaso and Lowell extension. Mass transit needs encouragement for environmental reasons and congestion reasons, don’t give people a reason to ditch it for their cars.

Thankfully, the NICTD is rather dubious about the whole plan and that much was clear this past Friday when the consenus seemed to be that they won’t support closure of the Miller station but are going to have a vote on it at a future date. Miller residents and rail enthusiasts are making their voices heard and it looks like the powers that be might actually listen to them.

If this development of downtown Gary ever actually comes into fruition, let it stand on it’s own merits, don’t hold commuters hostage for the benefit of a private developer. Either way, Gary is a graveyard of failed revitalization efforts. The current downtown Metro center was the last attempt to draw people downtown and it didn’t work. Just look at the abandoned supermarket next to 80-94 for more proof.

Lunacy. I hope better heads prevail and commuters win on this one.

I was dismayed last week to read in The Times that the City of  Valparaiso is going to start a free Movie on the Square program later in the summer. I love movies as much as the next guy but I think this is a horrible idea for one simple reason: the 49er Drive-in.

I love the 49er Drive-in. My wife and I have had many wonderful dates there and seen some fantastic movies. The 49er helped fill the first-run movie void when the Village Theater was torn down a couple years ago.

Why am I opposed to the Movies on the Square? Because the 49er Drive-in does not need more potential customers taken away from it. It simply cannot compete with free. The City of Valparaiso has no business playing movies to the public at no cost.

The 49er is a Valparaiso and Northwest Indiana institution. It is already facing stiff competition from the newly opened Cinemark 12 as well as the massive carbuncle that is the Portage 16 Imax.

Look at it this way, if you provide a family night out on the weekend, with a movie and fun atmosphere that doesn’t cost anything, that option will beat out the Drive-in which which will cost more than that free. You simply cannot compete with free.

Some may argue that the Movies on the Square won’t be competing with 49er because they won’t be showing first run movies. But look at it with the logic of a mother of a family of four who is on a budget. She will pick the free option. The 49er does not need more customers taken away from it.

There is also the nostalgia of going to the Drive-in that can’t be replicated anywhere. Drive-ins are a drying breed and we are very lucky to still have one in such fantastic condition as the 49er. Where else can you get two movies for the price of one and sit in the comfort of your car? Where else can you conceive a child and then take them to the same place several years later?

I understand that Valparaiso wants to bring more people downtown, I just implore them to do it another way so that we don’t lose the treasure that is the 49er Drive-in. We’ve already lost the Y&W Drive-in. I don’t want to see another go.

Check out the 49er Drive-in website to see what’s playing this week.

Just say no to Movies on the Square!

I was never really sold on the idea of the Indiana Dunes Visitor Center. Seemed to me like an incredible waste of money considering that it’s not really by the expressway and cost a ton of money to build. Surely people could rely on the similar money pit that is the Lake County Visitor’s Center. We didn’t really need two visitor center’s doing essentially the same thing.

I was shocked to find that I found it useful.

The wife and I have been enjoying the beginning of the summer by starting to bike ride in Northwest Indiana. We’ve ridden in a few cool places, the Sumer Valley and the Beverly Shores World’s Fair Homes (blog entry on that forthcoming), but we quickly ran out of ideas of places to ride. We needed a way to figure out where all the bike routes and bike paths were.

Generally, I rely on the internet for this sort of information. And the internet came up woefully short in quickly providing this information.

I was in the neighborhood one day and on a whim decided to run by the visitors center to see if they had any information about bike routes in Northwest Indiana. I walked in and was pleasantly surprise of how nice the place was. It was filled with people milling about and there was even a nice gift shop.

As soon as I entered a very helpful woman asked if I need help looking for something. I told her I was looking for a map of bike routes in northern indiana and she led me over to a shelf that had one. Sure enough, I opened the map and it was of the entire region and had a color coded map key of all the bike routes. Best of all, this map was free. It’s also a good map of the area to boot.

Inspired, I browsed all the bookcases and grabbed all the free brochures I could. Never hurts to have that stuff laying around.

The Dunes Visitor Center may have cost more money to build than I’ll ever make in my life, but it’s a nice guide to the fun things to do in Northwest Indiana. So I guess it’s not a complete waste.