The Racine City government and Alderman David Maack have enough on their plate considering Racine’s major issues in the areas of unrelenting crime, rising unemployment, mass departures of local businesses and growing foreclosure occurrences. But in a recent email to Mayor John Dickert and the Common Council, 5th District Alderman David Maack called for the permanent removal of Corinne Reid-Owens’ name from any State Street development project. Consequently, on November 3rd, the Mayor decided to form an ‘official’ commission to review alternative sites to memorialize Ms. Reid-Owens. Now the question remains: is forming yet another commission, simply to decide “naming privileges” in commemoration of a local community activist, really necessary?
The proposed project, which two African American developers, Damon Dorsey and Brent Oglesby, have sought to build, would be an $8.6 million effort to include 38 new, affordable apartment units and roughly 3,000 sq. ft. of commercial/retail space. The designated site for construction would be on State Street, very close to the location where some hope the Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee (KRM) commuter rail train will make future stops.
Former president of Racine’s NAACP branch and long time friend of Corrine, Beverly Hicks says she can’t understand why there is such a rush to name something after Reid-Owens, and why Alderman Maack insists on being the one to head-up the commission. “This should be a community effort and not tainted with politics,” says Hicks.
Upset with the way the city has responded to the project and its developers, 4th District Alderman James Kaplan says, not only is he not fond of Alderman Maack’ suggestions, he also believes that forming a commission may be an alternate method of appeasement based on the poor manner in which Oglesby was treated when he recently appeared before the Racine Redevelopment Authority, in October.
Developer Oglesby says he too is puzzled as to why the city wants to name something after someone who is still alive, without even contacting her about it. He suggests that naming a park or erecting a statue is an example of the city government trying to take undue credit and piggy-back on someone else’s idea.
