By Rick Peterson
Lawrence Today magazine, Spring 2003
En route from the Outagamie County airport to the Lawrence campus, where she was to receive an honorary degree, noted author Joan Didion remarked that she had spent the majority of her life on either of the coasts and had "heard" of heartland communities like Appleton but had never actually seen one. When that weekend's Commencement festivities concluded, Didion asked to be driven around town to check the place out for herself. Following her tour, she deemed Appleton "the most confident community" she had ever seen. That was in 1978. Twenty-five years later, the place is even more so.
Sparked by a mile-long makeover to College Avenue through the central city and fueled by the completion of a $45 million, world-class performing arts center, downtown Appleton has experienced a metamorphosis that would rival hometown boy wonder Harry Houdini's most famous stunt.
Downtown's decline
The one-time retail hub of the entire Fox Valley — as late as 1980, five major department stores, including Sears and J.C. Penney, operated downtown — Appleton could not escape the retail exodus to suburban malls that struck downtowns across the country during the past two decades. Despite herculean efforts by local leaders, Lawrence President Richard Warch among them, to convince them to stay, many of the downtown's most critical retailers gradually migrated three miles west to the behemoth Fox River Mall and its acres of free parking, which opened in 1984 and has seemingly been expanding ever since.
However, if necessity is indeed the mother of invention, then economic survival is the father of reinvention. Despite an at-one-time alarming number of empty storefronts, Appleton's main business district has been reborn and revitalized with a mix of specialty shops, cultural attractions, restaurants, and service providers. Much like the old family Oldsmobile, this is clearly not your father's downtown Appleton.
Some familiar faces remain, most notably Conkey's Bookstore, at 106 years in operation the oldest continuing business on the Avenue, and the ever-eclectic Cleo's, everyone's favorite watering hole. Once home to paint shops and photography studios, the downtown now is dotted with new dining options that serve ethnic entrees from cajun to quesadillas, four specialty coffee bars (though none a Starbucks) dispensing caffeine in a variety of exotic flavors and styles, art galleries displaying local reproductions as well as $15,000 originals, a live blues club, and a modern-day "speakeasy." Across the street from the Paper Valley Hotel, the former Penney's building, which stood vacant for more than 20 years, has been razed to make way for a $9 million, five-story, 73-room "boutique" hotel scheduled to open in early 2004. And who would have ever guessed Appleton would boast its own upscale "martini lounge?"
"There is a lot of new energy downtown and tremendous positive momentum," says Appleton Mayor Timothy Hanna, whose administration has overseen some of the most dramatic changes in downtown Appleton's history. "There's a lot of excitement — and you can feel it. You can see it in terms of just how many businesses — not only new ones that have moved in but well-established businesses — have taken this opportunity to put a new face on their businesses and on their buildings.
"What I find really cool about downtown is, if you go down the street from one end to the other, there are no chain stores," Hanna adds. "The restaurants are locally owned, the retail stores are locally owned, the coffee shops are locally owned. They all are local entrepreneurs, taking a risk, putting it on the line, making an investment in their own community. I think that bodes well for the long-term success of the downtown."
The PAC
Without question, the most impressive new downtown address belongs to the state-of-the arts Fox Cities Performing Arts Center. The privately funded facility opened with much fanfare on November 24 with a private performance by Tony Bennett for employees of Thrivent Financial for Lutherans (formerly AAL), the corporation that got the fast-track project rolling in 1999 with an $8 million gift.
A stunning showcase facility covering an entire square city block, the PAC features a 5,000-square foot main stage, not only the largest in Wisconsin but also bigger than any on Broadway. The main hall, one of two performance spaces in the building, seats 2,100 on four levels, with no seat more than 108 feet from the stage.
In an interview with The Post-Crescent, Lawrence trustee Oscar Boldt, who has been building buildings for 54 years and whose construction company put up the PAC, hailed it as "the equal of what you would find in New York. There is nothing in Wisconsin that matches this — nothing."
The facility expects to host some 180 performances a year, running the cultural gamut from nationally touring Broadway musicals and the London City Opera's Madame Butterfly to local Attic Theatre productions and Fox Valley Symphony concerts. The PAC scored a major scheduling coup in its first year and evoked envy among many larger cities, Chicago among them, by landing touring productions of both Mama Mia and Mel Brooks' Tony-Award winning The Producers for its four-show Broadway series.
The PAC and Lawrence
When the PAC's history eventually is written, Lawrence musicians will hold a distinct footnote in that archive. The Sambistas, the college's popular percussion ensemble, played the very first "concert" at the PAC, treating a lunchtime crowd to an open-air performance of their rhythmic drumming in June 2001 to celebrate the completion of the main stage. When the building was finished in November, but before its gala grand opening, Professor of Music Fred Sturm, '73, directed the Lawrence University Jazz Ensemble in a special performance for all the construction workers who built the facility.
"When the LUJE members set foot on the PAC stage for the first time, it was like that scene in the film Hoosiers when the small-town basketball players walk into the championship arena. We were awestruck and humbled by its grandeur," says Sturm. "I'm overwhelmed by the design and character of the theatre. The architects made magic — it's a big venue that wows you with its spectacle but can draw you in with its intimacy."
Kathleen Murray, dean of the Lawrence Conservatory of Music, sees the PAC complementing, rather than competing with, on-campus programming.
"Anything that raises awareness and support of the arts in the community at large is good for Lawrence," says Murray. "Lawrence and the PAC really have different kinds of performances. We couldn't host a Broadway-type production and they probably couldn't fill a 2,100-seat theatre for a solo artist like classical pianist Richard Goode. There isn't anything akin to our Artists Series and very little much like our Jazz Series on their schedule."
Having a venue of the PAC's caliber just blocks from their front door provides cultural opportunities for students at a convenience level few peer institutions can match. Much that once required a road trip to Milwaukee or Chicago is now literally within walking distance. In addition, the PAC holds the promise of offering our undergraduates experiences as participants as well as audience members. In December, several members of the choral program auditioned for and were selected to sing at a Christmas concert with Kenny Rogers. In May, members of the symphony orchestra, the concert choir, the women's choir, and the chorale will take to the PAC stage and join voices with the community White Heron Chorale and guest soloists for a performance of Verdi's La Traviata.
"I'll be constantly on the lookout for opportunities to perform there," says Sturm. "I'd like to see our jazz ensemble backing up renowned jazz artists when they need us, and I hope that show contractors will utilize the superb talents of my comrades on the conservatory faculty."
The addition of the PAC to the Appleton skyline as well as many of the other changes downtown — cultural and culinary as well as cosmetic — are but part of the reasons for a palpable sense of excitement permeating the downtown.
The street where we live
Streetscape, as the $5.2 million storefront-to-storefront reconstruction of College Avenue was known, was five years in the planning and completed 35 years after the city last undertook the logistical nightmare of completely rebuilding its signature street. The heavy lifting began in earnest in February 2002. Starting at the Richmond Street intersection, workers inched their way east toward the campus throughout the spring and summer — temporarily turning the normally congested avenue into a popular, albeit dusty, "pedestrian mall" for downtown workers and curiosity seekers alike — reaching Lawrence's Drew Street doorstep in August.
The end product is far more than just a pothole-free street. The reconstruction project included wider sidewalks, accented by six-foot-wide strips of colored and stamped concrete squares along the curb. Alternating street and sidewalk decorative lampposts add a brighter, distinctive look. With an eye on improving safety, colored crosswalks and pedestrian-friendly "bumpouts" are incorporated into the intersections. Amenities such as kiosks with maps and wayfinding signs, more than two dozen benches, and 72 planters sporting Patmore Ash and Honey Locust trees complete the design.
Look beyond the obvious, though, and it is clear the downtown changes are as much about attitude as they are aesthetics.
"It's all about creating a feeling, creating an atmosphere," says Mayor Hanna, who honed his childhood piano skills during ten years of lessons at the Lawrence conservatory and whose son Bill is a sophomore at Lawrence. "What we were trying to create is a downtown that was very inviting. There is a definite pride of ownership of College Avenue by the community. You can see that."
Appleton and Lawrence
It seems altogether appropriate that the main artery running through the heart of Appleton should be called College Avenue. After all, Lawrence was here first. The college's founding antedated Appleton's incorporation as a village by six years. With their respective histories intrinsically intertwined, Lawrence and Appleton have spent the past 150 years aging gracefully together, tethered by a once-muddy trail carved through a timber grove that has since evolved into a 62-foot wide ribbon of concrete.
"We are one of the anchors of downtown and as such we have a vested interest in the downtown being as healthy and vibrant as it possibly can be," says President Warch of the symbiotic relationship between city and campus.
"The Performing Arts Center is obviously the crown jewel in the whole affair. It is, without question, a world-class facility. My view on it from the get-go was, if it was to be a downtown facility, I was enthusiastically in support. You don't have Christmas parades and Flag Day parades at malls. You have them at city centers, and I think the efforts of the city fathers and private developers to make the downtown a more attractive place should be applauded. To the extent it jacks up the cultural variety available to members of the community, including our students, it is also good for us."
In his college-review book several years ago, Ted Fiske of The New York Times "nicked" Lawrence for its two- and three-hour distances from the cultural comforts of Milwaukee and Chicago, although curiously, as Warch pointed out to him, Williams College wasn't punished for the same sin of being three hours from New York and two hours from Boston. Before the next installment of Fiske's review was published, Warch extended an invitation to him for a personal visit, in an attempt to combat the perception-is-reality bias.
"He had a whole other take on the place, describing Lawrence as 'perched on a bluff overlooking the Fox River,'" Warch recalled of the later review. "The stereotype is that an urban center is where it's happening, and if you're far away from an urban center therefore you're where it's not happening. Appleton, at least potentially, negates that criticism to the extent anyone wants to offer that. We're not going to get confused with Chicago, but we're not going to get confused with Ripon, Wisconsin, either. The development of downtown Appleton has been a positive force for the greater good, and that certainly includes us."
Pride of ownership
According to Mayor Hanna, the changes that have occurred are just part of the city's natural maturation. Their aim was to improve the quality of life here, but not at the expense of the city's basic charm.
"Appleton has big-city appeal and a small-town feel," Hanna says, "and that's what we are. We're very small townish here, not in terms of sophistication, but in terms of friendliness, cleanliness. People know each other here. But, yet, it has some big-city appeal, with a performing arts center, major retail destinations, and Lawrence University, which is an asset a lot of the local people take for granted. There is a lot of great stuff here.
"When people come in from the outside, they can't believe this place. I remember talking to a reporter from the Los Angeles Times, who was here during the 2000 presidential campaign. He looked at me and said, 'You have to have one of the hidden treasures of the country here. I've never been in a place where the pride of ownership is so prevalent.'"
Joan Didion could have told him that years ago.
Sidebar: Lawrence students talk about the Avenue