Blogvoid

Sorry I haven't been blogging much lately. We took a vacation to Minnesota and then a couple days of AAU track meets and now I'm struggling to get caught back up.
I am trying to track down a rumor of a guy wanting to put a new movie theater in Washington. That would be extremely exciting in my opinion. It would be nice to get a young crowd downtown on Friday and Saturday nights.

Weather

There's kind of a gully-washer occurring here in Washington right now, but my wife says the ground was barely wet at our house six miles due south of town during the first 20 minutes of rain here. She said it was pouring there now too.

One more commissioner candidate

Mike Uhlrich, Democrat from Washington, has filed for the Washington County Commission District 2 position. He is the fourth candidate to file for the seat. This also makes a rare primary race for both the Democrat and Republican parties for this position. Brad Owen and Mike Uhlrich will run for the Democratic nomination and Roger Otott and Kathryn Stigge will run for the Republican nomination.
I will publish all of the filings in next week's issue of the News. We ran out of space this week.

Too many downtown vacancies

There are a lot of buildings for sale in downtown Washington right now and I don't know what to think about it.
To the north, the former Kuhlmann building that is currently being used by Bradford Built is being offered for sale now that their expansion at the industrial park can handle the work they were doing downtown. Along C Street, the former Monty Law Office is empty. I don't know if it is for rent or sale.
On the west side of the square, the Schooky's Deli buildings are for sale.
On the south side, the building that held an American Family Insurance office for a while is for rent and the lot of the former Major Theatre is still empty. Along C Street, on the east side, the former laundromat is for sale, signs were recently put on the former Liquid Glass building that it is for sale, and the Longhorn building is for sale. On the west side, Mayberry's Restaurant is for sale, and the former Earhart Abstract and Parry dental office are both being used as residences.
I remember about a year and a half ago commenting that there was practically no commercial space available in downtown Washington. I don't know what happened since then, but there are too many vacancies surrounding us now and we ought to try to do something about it.

Restaurant auction

Just an update on the restaurant auction that took place in Washington on Saturday. The Longhorn building did not sell. There was one bid, but it did not meet the reserve so it didn't sell. The Schooky's Deli building was not part of the auction. Only the equipment was auctioned and it evidently went well.

For this week...

Just a sampling of some of the stories we're working on for this week's issue:
• Wonderland, the revamped What Not City in Clifton, has sold to a buyer from England.
• Mayberry's, the three building restaurant in downtown Washington, is for sale.
• There was a large group of minors arrested over the weekend at a large kegger. Last I heard was 24 kids arrested. I also heard that about 50 kids got away by scattering into the hills. (Editor's note: The official sheriff's report said 14 kids received citations.)
• We're doing a little research for a story on the large numbers of valedictorians this county puts out each year.

Monday's softball-sized hail near Manhattan

I couldn’t resist posting photos of hail damage to vehicles in the Manhattan airport-Ogden area from Monday morning.
The photos show the rear window of Kerri Winter’s car (she is a Linn High grad) and the sunroof of the vehicle next to her. Notice the hail even blasted holes in the interior of Kerri’s car!
Here’s the story:
Kerri arrived at work on Monday morning and it was a sunny day. She works at a large business located near the Manhattan airport. Soon, however, black clouds moved in and she said it was almost like nighttime.
In came the wind and severe weather and the worst of it hit around 9 a.m. when SOFTBALL-sized hail, driven by high winds, fell for approximately 15-20 minutes. Kerri said it sounded like the roof was being beaten with baseball bats and you couldn’t hear anything.
Many employees were at the business windows watching the damage occur outside, including extreme damage to the vehicles in the parking lot.
Once it was over and they went out to assess the damage, she said there was glass everywhere and since then, of the approximately 200 vehicles in the parking lot, 90 percent of the vehicles have been totaled by insurance adjusters.
She said the lineup of wreckers to tow the vehicles on Monday afternoon was something to see.
Her building also took heavy damage to the roof. She said there were so many holes in the roof, it was like it was raining, but inside. The roofers were able to come out by Monday afternoon to start caulking thousands of holes. They had to work well into Tuesday to finish the job and it sounds like they’ll have to get an entirely new roof.
She said there are a lot of life-long Kansans working there and this was the worst hail anyone had ever seen.
Seeing the damage to the parked cars, I can’t imagine what the storm must have been like for someone driving on the highway there!