Decorations

 Rensselaer had its first frost of the season on Saturday morning, October 8, when the temperature dipped below freezing before sunrise. It killed only a few leaves in my garden so it was a very light frost.

New Art Exhibit

The new exhibit at the Fendig Gallery of the Carnegie Center is called "Focus on Fibers" and features quilts, hooked rungs, and baskets. Two impressive quilts hang on opposite sides of the gallery and both are done by Dula Meiser.

The baskets are spread throughout the gallery.

I do not know much about hooked rugs. In most of the ones on display, the design is by one person and the hooking was done by someone else.

An exception is this piece, both designed and hooked by Judy Lanoe.

The show runs until November 3. The gallery's hours are Tuesdays noon until 4:00 and Thursdays 3:00 until 6:00.

More scarecrows

Below are more of the scarecrows in Milroy Park. First up is a Franciscan entry.

I know little about Gavilon. I think they run but do not own the grain elevator at Pleasant Ridge. 

4-H has a funny looking scarecrow.

The ghostly girls is from the Jasper-Newton Foundation. When I first saw it I was not sure that it was finished, but it apparently is.

The Fire Department has a scarecrow that is hard to photograph because it is in partial shade.

I will post a few more in the future.

Other things

Farmers have had some excellent weather for the harvest. I finally got a picture of a combine in a soybean field. This is the field west of Sparling Avenue.

I saw a Facebook page that listed four places that are for rent in the College Mall. One of them is the former offices and rooms of Help at Home. I am not sure how long ago they left this location.

Strack & Van Til and the stores to the north have had their facades painted recently.

What's new?

I visited Francesville this week and saw the new mural.

Excavators were digging up South McKinley on Thursday. 

They were also digging out many of the sidewalks along the street. I think most of the rest of the work on street repaving and sidewalks has been completed.

The first Cylinders and Snacks event was held on Front Street on Tuesday evening.

It was lightly attended.

I was not observant enough to notice that the windows of the former Stunt Dog building were papered over.

The Women Who Know Almost Everything are confident that this will be the future home of Erica's Boutique.  According to the Facebook page, the store will open the week of June 22.

There is a new business in the College Mall, K&G's Overstock Outlet. It is in the space between the License Branch and Training Elite, another new occupant in the College Mall. A few years ago Fastenal was in this spot.

The business sells new merchandise, but because it gets overstocked items, there is not a fixed set of goods that it sells. It has a lot of space and room for a lot more merchandise than is currently there.

The business had a lot of clothing and smaller amounts of other items such as toys and electronic items. It will be fun to check them out occassionally to see how their merchandise changes with time.

The business is not completely new to Rensselaer. Previously the owners operated under a different business name from the garage next to Ron's Barber Shop on Vine and McKinley. (That complex is for sale.) 

On Monday the Memorial Day ceremony in Weston Cemetery will feature State Representative Doug Gutwein as the main speaker. The ceremony will be smaller and less contentious than the Memorial Day ceremony of 1899. Saturday's post will tell you about that embarassing event.

Odds and ends and a long meeting

On Tuesday I noticed that work was being done inside the former Farm Credit office that was in the same building as 5/3 Bank so I stopped by the bank to see what was happening. As I left, I noticed that the mural on the north side of the eMbers building now was visible from the entrance of the bank.

 If I had waited a day, I would have learned what was happening without asking. The new tenant will be ASG Staffing, an employment agency. Their Facebook page is here.

 I keep reading that 20 or 23 or 24 businesses were affected by the fire. I can not account for that many. I found eight that have links to Facebook pages: Cutting Room, Sune Salon, Nail Bumpers, Serenity Health & Wellness, Work One, Express Employment, Jasper County Economic Development, (also Jasper County Tourism), and B & D Pools and Spa. Some of these have found temporary quarters. The ladies of the Cutting Room are at the Renew Salon. Sune Salon is at A New Beginning. Nail Bumpers is at 219 W Harrison Street #2. Work One refers people to their Morocco office. Express Employment is temporarily at eMbers Venue. Other businesses that were affected are Hearing Care Professionals, Honey Comb, Filson Rentals, Dr Kim Moyer, Attorney Clifford Robinson, Amerimac Corporation, & Rich's Barbershop. I have not found an Internet site for any of them. My total is 16. Who am I missing?

Update: The November 23, 2019 issue of the Rensselaer Republican listed several additional businesses that were found by the Fire Chief from utility office records. Included were Filson Rentals (twice), MS Maxwell LLC, Corn Genetics, Miracle Ears (which is the same as Hearing Care Professionals), and LASUMIKI Enterprises LLC. Filson Rentals owned the former Sears building so would be paying utilities for any vacant space and MS Maxwell LLC owned the other building and would be responsible for any utilities there.

Sheets Family Practice, in a building east of the fire, has moved to its old location at 123 S McKinley because of smoke damage.

The follow-up post on the fire went viral and is currently the second most popular post that this blog has had. It is closing in on the most popular post ever and knocked the post about Jay Dwiggins out of the top five.

On Tuesday evening there was a joint Commissioners/Council meeting. The purpose of joint meetings is to share information about issues that concern both bodies. The meeting began with a short discussion of the pension for the Sheriff's Department. The Council would like to move away from a defined-benefit system to a defined-contribution system, but there are questions of how that can be done. The Sheriff noted that the current fund was in much better shape than when the issue was originally brought up because of the rising stock market.

The discussion of the County's participation in Rensselaer's downtown revitalization project was also short. It included a discussion of what the County should do with the Johnny Rusk property. The idea of giving it to the City was unpopular and I suspect that the lot will soon be sold.

In response to the NIPSCO task force, the Planning and Development Office has begun a review of the County's comprehensive plan. An ordinance on tax abatement is being prepared and may be taken up by the Council in December or January.

The new and unnamed county building (formerly the PNC Bank) is nearing completion. Hooking up telephones and internet is not yet scheduled. Century Link has been slow to respond and the elevator in the building will not operate without a phone connection. The annex from which offices will be moving has about 10,700 feet of space and the County will sell it as is.

A discussion of EMS services largely repeated what was said in the last Commissioners meeting. Expenses are rising and health care billing is getting more difficult. The service that serves Remington finds that one third of their calls are to the Interstate, a third to the truck stop, and a third to everything else. Jasper County has 38 miles of Interstate, which brings commerce but also requires services that sometimes are not reimbursed.

Mr Culp reported that he signed a document on Monday that will allow financing for the solar farm at the jail. There was a discussion of something about fire protection and the Commissioners approved the contract.

There was a surprisingly large crowd at the meeting and most were there for the last item on the agenda, a presentation from Spillman software. This is a software system that the Sheriff wants. It will tie together fire, police, and ambulance. It is used in 30 Indiana counties. In contrast, the software the Jasper County Sheriff is currently using is used in one, Jasper County.

 The Spillman representative explained the benefits and then went on to cost. The cost of purchasing it is expensive. After some discounts, he came to a total of almost $534,000.  Maintenance, which includes quarterly updates, will be about $77,000 per year. Payment can be made over two years with no interest charged during that period or else the software can be leased. The Sheriff has been trying to find other County users who can contribute the the cost. The Rensselaer Police Department is all in because the software they are using is nearing end of life and will not have continued support. Several townships were willing to participate while others were undecided. The town of DeMotte thought the funding expected from them was too high.

The implementation of the new software will take 12 to 15 months. There is a learning curve and training is necessary. The Spillman representative offered a discount if the County would adopt before the end of the year. Mr Culp did not like that move because he does not want to make a hasty decision.

The joint meeting lasted an hour and fifty minutes. The County Council meeting began an hour later than scheduled. It approved several additional appropriations and several transfers of funds. The Sheriff reported that serious incidents at the jail had declined and attributed some of the decline to work of Dr. Chad Pulver. The Council reappointed Jacob Ahler as its attorney. Mr Ahler asked if the Council wanted him to work on an ordinance establishing economic recovery areas (ERAs) that are a first step in setting up TIF districts. The Council approved. The last item discussed was a possible upgrading of the meeting room. The Council agreed that Mr Andree should continue looking into options. With that the meeting adjourned.

I missed the Jasper County Historical Society meeting that took place at same time as the meetings above but watched the video of the meeting on Facebook. The video is really well done—notice how it switches between different cameras. Before the program on Native American foods, Linda B mentioned that the former Longs building was originally a Nash dealership that her family owned. Across the street where R&M is now was the Ford dealership.

The concession building for the Blacker Fields is getting a second floor that will be the announcer's booth/press box.

The effort by the Parks for People Campaign to raise $50,000 by the December 29 has ten donors and $23,938 raised as of Thursday morning. There are no small donations listed on the projects page.

A lot of pictures

Below is a picture of all that remains of the angry birds mural that was painted this past summer.

 The heat from the fire that destroyed the Town Mall warped the side of the sign that faced the fire.

 On Tuesday the Remington fire department sent their aerial truck to extinguish a flare up of the fire. The excavator was busy digging in the debris at the same time. Rensselaer's aerial truck is out of service because the ladder does not function properly.

Fencing has been erected around the entire half block to keep people away from the demolition that is starting to take place.

Several former tenants of the Town Mall have found temporary places from which to conduct business. The Cutting Room will work out of the Renew Salon, Express Employment said that they would be at Healthy Haven (updated to Embers Venue). Work One refers people to their Morocco office. If you know of other arrangements, write something in the comments to the blog.

It is sad to see the sign below. The new bakery seemed to be off to a strong start.

 County Bumpkin has a very attractive sign in its window.

 I visited the bridge on Saturday and the approach still had not been paved. On Tuesday there was new asphalt and a machine was cutting grooves into the surface.

 It is good to have groovy bridges.

I am not sure what else needs to be done. It looks about ready to open.

On Tuesday I got a chance to see what was happening inside the old PNC building. The open lobby has been closed in with walls. The main part of the prosecutor's office will be behind the wall on the right.

Below is a peek through the door. Along the far wall are the offices that were in the bank. They remain.

Where once bank tellers waited on customers are several small offices behind a new wall. The far office will be for emergency management and the others will be for people working on child support issues.

 Here is a look into two of the small offices.

 Do you remember what the balusters of the old stairs looked like? The new ones are much closer together. The door is for the elevator and if you look carefully you might see some of the elevator mechanism.

 The basement has lots of small rooms. It will house the probation department. The view below is not showing the staircase of the previous photo but the one on the other side of the building.

 I noticed that there was what looked like an old patch to the concrete that had been signed by some of the bank workers. I suspect it has hidden under carpet for years and that it will soon be hiding under carpet again.

 The finishing date is uncertain. The building still needs to have computer networking installed and no date has been set for that. (Not the County's fault.)

Both the Jasper County BZA and Plan Commission met on Monday night. The BZA meeting lasted five minutes and approved continuing a variance for a person who had his mother-in-law living in a trailer on his property. The variance has to be renewed every two years. The Plan Commission was scheduled to meet at 7:10 and had to wait for five minutes to begin its meeting. Its meeting approved a three-lot subdivision in Kankakee Township. A variance for this property had been granted at last month's BZA meeting. The Plan Commission meeting last ten minutes. If there is an agenda for either group, the meeting will be December 16. The third Monday in January is the M.L. King holiday, so the January meeting, if there is one, will be the 27th.

Strack and VanTil has their Christmas trees on display.

Changes downtown

On Friday the Little Coffeeshop on 231 celebrated its one-year anniversary with a ribbon cutting. It will be offering specials over the weekend to celebrate.

 There are several businesses that have recently opened in the downtown. Only a few weeks old is Healthy Haven, which features smoothies, protein shakes, and teas. It occupies the space that was most recently the annex room for the Clauss Bakery.

 Not all of the seating has been installed.

The bar was built by the owner who started this business in January from her home. She was able to blow it up using social media and now has enough business to move to a downtown location.

 Below is the menu.

Next door the bakery is closed but will soon open under different management.

 I mentioned Healthy Haven and another business that recently opened downtown in a May post. That second business, New Millennium Mortgage, is a branch of the DeMotte office. The branch manager is a Rensselaer native who has worked in banking and real estate, so a move to mortgage origination seemed to be a logical move. The office is open Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and by appointment on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It is located on Van Rensselaer behind the Beaver law office.

 PartyTown Rentals, which has its warehouse on Melville, now has a storefront on Front Street.

 I was surprised when I went inside and found that most of the display was for Gatherings. So it too now has a storefront.

 In the same building is the expanded Unwind Massage. It now has three massage rooms, each with its own licensed and certified massage therapist, plus a tanning room and a room for facials. Each of the massage rooms has its own decor.

 Unwind Massage has been in this location for some time, but until recently was only using the very back of the building. The owner recently purchased the building and expanded into the front where the Birthright offices used to be. In addition to the massage rooms, there is a large room that is used for yoga.

Below is their menu of services with prices. Just as with the Healthy Haven menu, I have little idea of what the various items consist.

In addition to these business changes, there are two more changes coming to the downtown. Renovations of the old Horton building and the old PNC building continue.

During the two weeks I was out of town, work was done to the exterior of the Autumn Trace complex. The company also posted pictures on Facebook showing the current state of the interior.

While I was taking the picture above, I noticed that the vacant lots nearby were having hay harvested and that reminded me that I need to answer the question I posed in the last post.  The machine is a hay steamer that adds moisture to the hay while it is being baled. In the arid west, the hay often does not have enough moisture to make good bales and this machine fixes that problem. If you want to know more, go to the website of the manufacturer, here.

Finally, the walking trail in Monnett-Staddon now has crushed rock on it.

I joked in May that it was Rensselaer's first roundabout. On my trip west I found an even more confusing traffic pattern, the Diverging Diamond Interchange. It is explained here.