Creator of American Girl, No Storybook Ending after Restoring a Small Scenic Village

[Cleverboy]

There was an article on CNN that made me a bit sad. It kind of reminds me of what Apple is dealing with releasing updating its iPhone. No good did goes unpunished. Always two sides to every story, and grips a-plenty...

The village of 700, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was anything but shiny six years ago. Paint peeled off old mansions, the inn struggled to stay open and the college struggled with enrollments.

And then a wealthy benefactress swept in, bringing money and promises and a stirring vision of the future.

She bought some buildings and tore others down. She moved houses and businesses and trees. She buried power lines. She spent $2 million on a lavish refurbishing of college interiors.

She rattled the village to its core.

"It wasn't restoration," says music teacher Karen Hindenlang of the changes, which tore apart old friendships and rankled neighborly goodwill. "It was a descent to madness."

Randi Zabriskie, owner of Jane Morgan's Little House clothing store, says it unleashed nothing short of a war.

"It was like this great white Arabian horse came walking through our village and little houseflies jumped on it -- sad, diminished people who didn't understand that this place was going to dust and she saved it."

The savior was Pleasant Rowland of Madison, Wisconsin, who made her fortune creating The American Girl doll -- pricey toys with homespun historical biographies (Kirsten, a pioneer girl of strength and spirit; Addy, a courageous girl during the Civil War; and others.)

Today, debate still simmers. Did the doll tycoon save Aurora?

Or in attempting to restore and recreate it, did she transform the village into a glossy historical caricature that somehow lost its soul?

http://www.cnn.com/2007/LIVING/wayoflife/10/14/aurora.makeover.ap/index.html

If I had a 700 million dollars fortune, and the will to do something good... I wonder if I'd be willing to pay the emotional price for getting involved with trying to change something for the better.

And though Rowland was spotted briefly this summer, her friend Randi Zabriskie says she cannot comfortably walk down Main Street again "and risk one of those idiots spitting at her."

Zabriskie hosted a thank you party for Rowland last January. Before 150 people, her husband Steve Zabriskie, read a poem thanking Rowland for shining her light on Aurora.

As Zabriskie tells it, Rowland grew misty-eyed.

"In my heart I knew you were all there," she said. "I just didn't know you were so many."

~ CB

 

[nbs2]

My sisters ended up on the catalog list when they were younger. I thought they were kind of dumb (the dolls, not my sisters). But, I do feel bad for people like this lady. It seems like all to often, people are willing to let their cities, towns, and villages decay into nothingness because of their pride and refusal to accept the vision of those who aren't part of the local leadership.

I don't know why, but for some reason stories like this make Hot Fuzz feel more like a documentary than just a piece of fiction.

 

[AmbitiousLemon]

Well I read the article this morning and you are definitely not representing the other side here. She basically came in forcibly took ownership of buildings gutted them with no care for restoring them to their historical condition and made them into her own vision.

The people are upset because they lost their homes and businesses and the historic sites were destroyed rather than restored.

Its a shame she didn't help by giving donations or no interest loans to the current owners to help them fix things up. Its a shame she didn't let the historic groups help in restoring the buildings rather than just tearing them down and making them modern. I suspect thats more what people expected when she first showed up.

 

[MacHipster]

There's nothing wrong with investing in refurbishment or preservation, but she didn't do that. I agree with AmbitiousLemon, she pulled a Dick Cheney...thinking she'd be greeted warmly for tearing up their history to create her own.

 

[Cleverboy]

Well I read the article this morning and you are definitely not representing the other side here. She basically came in forcibly took ownership of buildings gutted them with no care for restoring them to their historical condition and made them into her own vision.

There are two sides to every story, certainly. If she hadn't come along, these business that were bankrupt and falling apart would have faded away as the local economy continued its slow downward spiral. I don't think it was half as ego-centric as you imply.

Change can be painful, but sometimes you can't move forward without it. If someone's lease wasn't renewed in a building that had previously been bankrupt, for some its trading bad for bad, but which bad is worst?

My uncle bought my grandmother's house a couple of years back. He made sweeping changes, and many renovations, including the clearing out of a basement chock full of memories and keepsakes. My grandmother was moved to the 2nd floor, and the rent went up for her and my cousin who lived upstairs. The downstairs tenant, a longtime family friend, moved out and took the opportunity to buy a house in another town. Before long, my cousin moved too, purchasing a multi-family house with her other relatives. Through the whole process, there was a lot of anger at the sudden changes. At one point, my grandmother had me come over and pull her books out from the rain... having been moved out the day before trash day, after a deadline passed.

Looking at the house today, the relationships are bruised, but not broken. The house is amazing, and my uncle gets many compliments on the vision he effected on the old place. He even worked with the neighbor to create a joint paved driveway that went into a backyard formerly a grassy yard. As much as my grandmother and some other relatives had problems with the way my uncle went about things, now... 2 years later, it doesn't seem as bad anymore.

The change was just painful, urgent and swift.

She touched a lot of lives for the better, and gave that town a new chance.

Honestly, YES... "ungrateful" is my stamp for people who think otherwise and want to make a bad caricature of a good person. If one could turn back time, I'd like to take back gifts like these... but in the end, sometimes it is the generation that follows that will see them for what they really meant... and a legacy of improvements that will last for generations more.

~ CB

 

[ejb190]

I sat on a county plan commission for a few years. It was really amazing to me the number of people who would sit on their hands until someone else came in to do something with a property. Then they wine and complain that it's not being done right or it will ruin their property value or the new development will increase traffic. (Or they don't show up at public meetings until much later and complain they never had their say.) They had a chance to put their money where their mouth is, but didn't do it.

I agree that the projects might have been done with a lighter touch and more sensitivity to the community. But it takes a very good negotiator to get to the core issues with your critics and develop a compromise that is both feasible and financially possible.