Mixed emotions about Hickory Grove

Terry Dickow
Posted 1/20/22

I have mixed emotions about Hickory Grove coming down.

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Mixed emotions about Hickory Grove

Posted

I have mixed emotions about Hickory Grove coming down.

Work started this week on removing the complex, and complex it was.

The restaurant business is hard, and having a restaurant on the second floor of a building with no street exposure is a double whammy. To me, it seemed the building was designed to fail. 

But I am still sad.

It served Rochelle well. Hickory Grove provided a place for weddings, birthday parties, meetings, plays, dinner theater, dances, banquets….yet it just never seemed to be designed right for any of those events.  

Hopefully the next developer can come up with a plan that includes a restaurant, meeting spaces, and a banquet area. The building could become a destination spot.

But please don’t put the restaurant on the second floor.

Street department

Interesting to read about the street department getting ready for the snow. We will get snow eventually. I did not realize how long it took to fully plow streets in town or how many miles are plowed, 160 miles…..that’s about  to Springfield or La Crosse, Wisconsin!  

These folks are out in cold weather, with poor visibility, at all hours of the day or night trying to make our lives safer.  

Yes, driveways will get snow, but it has to go somewhere.  

We have been fortunate so far this winter, but we will get hit by a storm. When it happens, give a shout out to the crews making your life safer.

Garbage

Rochelle residents will be getting garbage cans. The official cans will be the only ones picked up by the disposal service. I was driving through DeKalb  and Sycamore recently and noticed they all have the same cans. 

The new cans will keep garbage from being blown around, or from animals getting into the bags.  It should also make it easier to collect.

I know some people are upset because they just bought a garbage can, spending good money on something that won’t be used. That is irritating. It would have been nice to give residents  five or six months notice, or telling new residents not to buy an expensive can.

I live outside the city limits, so this does not affect me. Yet. I assume folks like me will eventually get the same cans. My current can has a couple of holes in it, a cracked side, and who knows where the lid has gone, but I am not about to replace it.

Terry Dickow can be contacted at terrydickow@gmail.com