KENOSHA STREETCAR EXPANDING

[Ocklawaha]

Kenosha residential buildout.

City Council approves Streetcar line studies.
Sunday, 30 November 2014 01:15 AM to 10:00 AM

Where: Kenosha Municipal Building

Despite continuing attacks by anti-rail aldermen Keneth Polzin and Michael Pitts, Kenosha City Council aldermen vote a 15-2 approval towards allocating the first $1.5 million to extend KERy streetcar service into the developing Uptown area, part of the City's 2006-2010 Capital Improvement Plan. The expense will focus on the necessary design and engineering studies.

Rail is permanent. People will buy or build knowing that the service is here. This is not a one-year project, it's a 10-, 20- 30-year project to replace the area's largest employment site with new housing, commercial, recreational or other activity. Today, it is open empty lots. Tomorrow, it's a new city. - Kenosha Transit Director Joseph McCarthy, 2000.

It's about creating a magnet for more apartments, condos, retail and high-tech doing what progressive cities already have done to lure the next generation of young entrepreneurs, workers and hipsters to their downtowns.

I think that having the streetcar connect all of the businesses on Main Street (EXPANSiON) would be beneficial to those businesses, would add value to downtown, would take people from the attractions on the lakefront, the museums, and introduce them to the businesses in the downtown. - Kenosha Mayor Keith Bosman, February 10, 2013.

(Sorry anti-rail folks, but it is now built out... 14 years later. STREETCAR = TOD OCK)

Kenosha Meta Station

Kenosha Metra Station (connected to town by heritage streetcar) to have a rail-themed restaurant.
Sun Nov 30, 2014

Choo Choo Charlie's, the Kenosha Metra station's proposed "kid-centric restaurant," is still waiting for its rails and trains.
The restaurant, a projected launched by Happenings magazine Publisher Frank Carmichael, is scheduled to open in late February without much fanfare.

"The three-year lease has been signed; we have hired a manager and we're working on the logo," Carmichael said this week. "We will open it quietly. I've been told you always want to open a restaurant quietly. You don't want to have so many people come in and have the new staff be overwhelmed."

Choo Choo Charlie's, modeled after a restaurant in Des Plaines, Ill., will offer quick-serve breakfast and lunch to Metra commuters and then operate as a kids' restaurant, offering activities and its own version of meals on wheels — meals served to kids in baskets carried by model train cars coming from the kitchen.

Staff will wear train conductor uniforms, and the menu will feature burgers, grilled cheese and other kid-friendly options, Carmichael said.

The restaurant is slated to operate from 5:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekdays and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on weekends.

Carmichael said he still has to hire a staff and do about $30,000 of building work. The construction includes modifying the seating, reconstructing a wall, putting in the train sets and building a lunch counter.

"We have to modify it to accomodate the trains," Carmichael said.

Day-trip destination Carmichael said he got the idea for this theme from a restaurant he visited as a youngster. He wants to make Choo Choo Charlie's a destination restaurant that will draw families. He's especially interested in attracting Illinois families who live along the Metra train line.

He envisions families riding the Metra train to the restaurant, having a meal, riding the Kenosha streetcar and visiting the nearby Dinosaur Discovery Museum and the Kenosha Public Museum. He said he will launch a mail campaign to lure families to the restaurant.

"I think there is a void of a kids-centric restaurant experience," Carmichael explained. "It will be somewhat mildly entertaining."

"The people hate rail - they want more buses..." JTA