Williams Bay Angst

When Keanu Reeves famously jumped an imaginary train to Williams Bay in the disastrous film Chain Reaction, Williams Bay was this close to becoming an international film star. When the movie flopped and only 87 people saw it at the theater, Williams Bay went into a funk. Like a teenager who showcases his disdain for authority by growing his hair long, piercing his ears, and tattooing his forearms, Williams Bay too got a little rebellious. Intent on shielding the world from its defining attribute, Williams Bay grew its hair long too. It’s only that instead of hair, Williams Bay grew weeds.

There comes a time every year when Williams Bay is forced to grow up, and thankfully, yesterday was that lucky day. Pardon me if I get a little emotional here, but, imagine if you only were allowed to get one haircut a year. Your ears covered in shag. Your tall forehead, normally a sign of power and vitality, covered in a messy shroud of adolescent angst. If you were only allowed one haircut a year, the day of that cut might be more important to you than Thanksgiving afternoon or Christmas morning. Combined. For the Bay, it took all of a couple minutes for a lawn mower, dragged by a tractor, to level the weeds that Williams Bay had spent the better part of seven months cultivating. I drove by just as the tractor finished, and once again my eyes lit up with the reminder that Williams Bay does indeed have a sort of famous lake hiding behind all those intentional weeds.

I get some grief once in a while for making fun of Williams Bay and their weeds. I even get some customers who think I don’t like Williams Bay real estate as a result of my hatred of the weeds. That couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s the old “love the sinner, hate the sin” thing. I love Williams Bay, I just hate the way they choose to develop, or better put, not develop this potentially charming little village. While Fontana spit shines and buffs every possible corner of town, Williams Bay just sits there. Like a 17 year old with a bad disposition and fuzzy math skills in the back of second period algebra. Williams Bay doesn’t really know what it is, and it has no idea what it wants to be when it grows up.

I grew up in the Bay, and this village serves as the backdrop of nearly all of my childhood memories. Try as they might, they cannot hide the beautiful lake that laps its thousands of feet of shore. The lack of focus in the public park areas aside, I also like real estate in Williams Bay. The real estate here is fabulous, and associations like Cedar Point Park, Summer Haven, Oakwood Estates, The Congress Club, and Loch Vista Club provide a plethora of vacation home options within the village. Values here are stable, it’s just that if the Bay got some glimpse of how to improve itself, and how to keep the weeds down at the lakefront (weeds that were purposefully planted), we really might take this town to the next level. Williams Bay might not ever be Fontana, but can we at least position ourselves above Walworth? Please?

Never one to criticize without offering a plan to improve, my method for cleaning up the precious, but overlooked, lakefront is a simple and relatively affordable one. First things first, cut down the weeds. They’re horrible, and everyone except for the people that planted them despise their subsidized existence. Once the weeds are down, install a natural stone rip rap shoreline extending from the Western boat pier all the way West to the Bay Shore border. Next, build up the land near the lakefront as needed (not more than a foot or two) and continue the brick walkway that currently stops at the foot bridge over Southwick Creek all the way West to the Bay Shore property. Have my friends at Twilight Solutions install low voltage, Yerkes friendly, high quality copper path lighting along the walk, starting at the bridge and once again, continuing West to Bay Shore. Lanscape with some low lying flowers along the path, perhaps a nice mix of native Lilly’s, prairie grasses and Black Eyed Susans, and call the lakefront plan complete.

Next, so we can bring a little continuity to a town that possesses none, let’s focus our attention across Geneva Street to the waste of graveled space that is the “sailboat rigging area”. What makes it a “sailboat rigging area”? The sign that says “sailboat rigging area”, that’s what. Let’s pave the parking lot, or if we don’t want to pave it because of the increases run off it would encourage, let’s at least landscape around it to define the parameters of the lot better, and fill the interior with crushed granite or something decidedly less Tomahawk-ish than regular old gravel. Let’s install some nice sandblasted signage, the same kind that we’re going to need to put at the two entrances to town, and try to catch up with the other lakeside municipalities that also boast sandblasted signage. We’ll landscape the entrace to the “sailboat rigging area”, and at the very least make it look pretty.

As I think about the improvements I’d like to make, I think the Village would be able to undertake them for a couple hundred thousand dollars. Sounds like a lot, but even if it was $250,000, that would only be about 15% of the cost of a nearly invisible bike path that the village is currently discussing. It would also come in at a mere fraction of the millions upon millions of dollars that Fontana has wisely spent as it positions itself as the premier lakeside destination on Geneva Lake.

So Williams Bay, for today, I will rejoice in your haircut. I’ll enjoy the view of my prized lake from your main thoroughfare for the next 6 months. When the weeds start growing in the spring, just don’t be surprised to see me with a weedwhip in hand and water on my shoes, dutifully fulfilling the will of the people.