Coffee with the Mayor yields small turnout but big conversations

 

[January 17, 2024] 

On Saturday, January 13th, Lincoln Mayor Tracy Welch hosted his bi-monthly Coffee with the Mayor event at Guest House Coffee and pastries.

Joining him for the meeting were Alderman Kevin Bateman and Building and Zoning Officer Wes Woodhall.

With the weather being quite cold and the forecast iffy, there was a small turnout for this month’s event. Nonetheless, Welch and his counterparts spent more than an hour visiting with those in attendance. Conversations ranged from city business to observations on the Lincoln Railer Basketball teams.

Cindy Lowe is a regular attendee at the meetings and was present Saturday. She said that one of her curiosity questions for this week was what had happened to the Wells Firearms firing range. Welch said that the current location on North Chicago Street was closed, but that owner Jeremy Wells was doing business from his home outside of Lincoln. He said the firing range in town had suffered a perfect storm of trying to recover from the covid epidemic to complications with tax incentives and the associated paperwork. He said it was unfortunate that the business was unable to remain in the city. Woodhall noted that Wells does still own the former Illico property and that he has not heard that Wells plans to liquidate it at this time.

Lowe said that her observations of the Dog Park on Eighth Street is that it appears to be well received, and it busy a lot of the time. She said she sees more large dogs at the park than small ones. Welch said that he was pleased with the park and is also hopeful that someday the city may be able to expand the offerings in that park. He said he would like to see a walking path and maybe a pavilion at the park, and he would like to give the park an official name.

The group tossed around ideas about improving the downtown area, including ideas about the old Oasis building. Welch said he is pleased with the way the downtown grants with the city are working for business owners. He said that to date the city has invested about $300,000 in grants for structural improvements to downtown businesses. He added that the city does not pay the full cost of improvements, so the dollars spent by property owners is in the range of $700,000. He said it is making a difference in the way the city looks and in the amount of business being conducted in the city.
 

There were discussions about new businesses that could come to town, and Bateman spoke about trying to bring in a Popeye’s Chicken. What he found was that Lincoln was not a large enough community to support the franchise according to the company. Bateman isn’t sure he agrees, but he said that is one of the biggest obstacles to bringing in larger franchises. It was mentioned that this was a good reason for the city and community to get behind the boutique eateries in the community. Non-franchised businesses such as the Blue Dog and Amigos World that have recently celebrated openings in Lincoln answer the needs of its culinary customers even though they are not franchised businesses.

Welch said he liked the stories attached to both of those businesses, and especially had been excited about Amigos. He said it was an example of young people staying in their hometown community to open a business. He noted that it was also a big deal to note that they are one of the new businesses that is populating what was not all that long ago a very neglected part of the city. Seeing new businesses coming into Chicago Street is a big step forward for the city on the whole.

Welch noted that the cameras that were installed on the corners of the Logan County courthouse are up and running, providing added security to the downtown area.

Another topic of discussion was the video gaming in the city. Welch said that there is currently a freeze on accepting gaming applications because the number of machines in the city is excessively high. He said that there are 208 video gaming machines in the city of Lincoln. He noted that in Bloomington there are only 80 machines. He said that comparing the size of Bloomington to the size of Lincoln puts the overpopulation of gaming establishments in perspective.

At the same time, Welch shared that based on information publicly accessible on the state gaming board website, the machines in Lincoln in the month of November 2023 yielded more than $6,000,000 in gross revenue for the state. From that, about $4,000,000 was paid out to players, and the city’s cut of the net revenue came to around $84,000. He said that made the topic of gaming harder to address. He is not happy with the number of machines in the city and he is going to continue working to drop that number down a bit, but at the same time, he has to consider what the gaming revenue is doing for the city. In the end, he said there are no easy answers for the dilemma, and he has to just keep working toward what he believes is in the best interest of the city and its citizens.

While the weather may have hindered the usual number of guests, the conversations on Saturday were worthwhile for those in attendance. Welch will continue hosting the meetings, with the next one anticipated to come in March.

[Nila Smith]