A Note to the Readers of the TOWN Report
on the Genesee Theatre Renovation Project
We in TOWN are as excited as anyone in Waukegan about the Grand opening of the new Genesee Theatre, scheduled for December 3, 2004.
May Bill Cosby be merely the first of many world-class performers to grace the stage, and may a successful theatre
become the engine to drive the redevelopment of our entire downtown.
But we in TOWN, like many other Waukegan citizens, are also disturbed about the painful process by which the new
Genesee Theatre was belatedly born.
This report has nothing to do with the theatre's future success.
It has everything to do with the way that city business has been conducted.
We invite you to read and ponder, and we welcome your comments. |
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Introduction
Over a period of some eight months, beginning on February 17, 2004 and continuing to October 14, TOWN filed a series of FOIA requests and wrote follow-up letters to review a wide spectrum of the City of Waukegan's records and documents pertaining to the Genesee Theater renovation project.
While the City Clerk, Finance Director, and City Attorney tried their best to comply with these FOIA requests, there was continuing difficulty and delay in locating important paperwork.
There was no response to TOWN's final follow-up letter faxed to Pickus Construction, seeking the opportunity to review construction and architectural documents that the City Attorney indicated might be in its possession.
We are concerned that there was apparently no central city custodian of the Genesee Theatre paperwork, that no city office or officer had possession and control of the full set of records and documents for this major project, backed by the full faith and credit of the city and also funded by state and federal grants.
Although the City Attorney has expressed his good faith belief that we have been able to review all of the non-exempt Genesee Theatre records and documents in the city's possession, we cannot be totally confident that we have seen everything there is to see, given the lack of a central repository and the piecemeal fashion in which the paperwork has been produced.
Thus, our original intention to learn and tell the underlying story of this renovation project, to lay out the specific reasons for the years of construction delay and the reported millions in cost overruns, has been frustrated.
Despite persistent attempts to uncover the complete set of facts, we have been unable to put ourselves into a position to speak with precision about the troubled history of this project.
The best we can do is to lay out a tentative timeline of the events that have brought us to our present state, with a theatre that was to be substantially completed by mid-September still under construction, with projected losses looming and future programming under-funded even when the theatre finally opens on December 3,
and with the project's most ardent supporters still bitterly divided.
We will also touch upon problems we encountered in attempting to make sense of the city's expense summaries for this project, and in conclusion, we shall pose questions that cry out for answers.
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