I suppose that’s an inaccurate headline. The college didn’t sell, but the land that once hosted the YMCA camp and later Aurora University’s Williams Bay operations, has sold. I have myriad thoughts on this deal and what it said, and says, and hopefully will say about the state of the lake and of Williams Bay specifically, but I will keep most of those thoughts for my own introspections. The public part of this is quite simple: Lake Geneva is better for this sale.
The battle that waged around this property, the village and the buyer (whom I was proud to represent) was about little more than the desire to keep things as they are. When faced with change, our collective default is to embrace similarity. This is why I order the same thing at restaurants time and time again, and why I eschew fancy restaurants. Ever since I cautiously poked my way through a lunch time dish of Warmed Sturgeon Belly at Blackbird I realized that I’d rather eat something familiar. A curious, barely cooked protein eater I am not. I dislike change for no other reason than the reality that change can be, and often is, bad, or at least disappointing.
The issue with change is that we’re poisoned by our own definition of “the way things were”. My definition, as a soon-to-be-47-year-old, is shaped by the Williams Bay that I personally knew when I grew up here in the 80s and early 90s. But my definition of the way things were differs tremendously from that of my near 81 year old father, just as his definition is at odds with the views of my 19 year old daughter. There is no such thing as “the way things were”, there’s just the way we remember them, and that outlook is different for everyone. We can’t make municipal policy based on the preservation of the way things were for this very reason.
I never felt the need to keep George Williams College “the way it was” because it’s already not what it was. It was a basic YMCA camp. Then it became something else. Then, something else. Then, you guessed it: something else. The newest something else promises to benefit not just the select few who paid to attend college there, but everyone in the community, both full time and vacation home residents, and the municipality who had the foresight and resolve to welcome this change. Right now, that benefit doesn’t look so obvious to those who were staunchly opposed to the vision of an upscale, low density country inn, and I can respect their position. But for me, I couldn’t be more excited about what’s coming next to this iconic property on the North Shore of Fontana Bay. Just as I was honored to represent the University of Chicago and their Yerkes holdings, I feel uniquely privileged to have represented the world class buyer of the magnificent grounds we know as George Williams College.
Above, the vision for what’s coming next, as shown at the Williams Bay village board meeting in March.