Hospital Deadline, Golf Course Rejection, and Another Frigid Winter

 

WELL, HERE IT is, the end of August, the supposed deadline for a decision on the relocation of Marquette General Hospital, so it should happen this week, right?

Don't count on it, if the city's Roundhouse location is one of the two final candidates, which we hear it is.

The thing is, the City Commission's subcommittee on the hospital would have to approve a possible deal and then the City Commission as a whole would have to vote publicly on it before the city could assure Duke LifePoint that the deal is a go.

That's not likely to happen by the end of this week.

Now, if DLP has already decided it's selecting the Township site behind the Westwood Mall, that's a different story. It could happen this week.

But what we hear is that DLP is still having talks with the city over the Roundhouse site--questions answered, details clarified--while communications with the Township have been silent for about a month. That may mean DLP is totally satisfied with the Township offer while it's got doubts about the city's offer.

Or it may mean...

Oh hell, who knows what it means?
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IN CASE YOU'RE wondering why the Marquette Golf Club ended talks with Duke LifePoint a week ago, here's why.

The club, after building the highly acclaimed but financially taxing Greywalls course almost a decade ago, remains about four million dollars in debt. It's a tough nut to crack.

A substantial offer from DLP for half of the Heritage course could have solved the problem but DLP's offer was somewhere in the neighborhood of three million plus. After taxes and various costs, the club would have cleared maybe two million at most, probably less.

And they would have been left without a clubhouse and a pro shop. If they had rebuilt those and taken care of other maintenance issues, their remaining cash from the sale would barely have made a dent in their debt.

And they would have been saddled with a nine hole course and an eighteen hole course divided by a huge hospital complex which, for the next couple of years, would have been nothing more than an ugly, dusty construction zone.

Hardly a wise strategy to attract new golf club members.

What could Duke LifePoint have offered to change a few minds? "Ten million would have been a good number," according to one member, half jokingly. Or maybe not.
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THE TRIALS AND tribulations of ABC 10 continue.

News director and anchor Rick Tarsitano has left the Ishpeming-based station for a more lucrative position on Lake Michigan--Chicago's WGN.

Bigtime. Big station. And both Rick and his wife are from the Chicago area.

He'll be a sports producer there, not on the air for now, but don't rule that out in the future. He's a talent who provided some much needed stability at the chronically underfunded ABC 10.

"Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be TV journalists..."

Rick's had to walk a rocky path ever since he got into TV a few years back. He was hired as an off camera producer (for peanuts) at TV6 and struggled to get on the air, despite having a strong work ethic and obvious talent. He was frustrated. Then he was explicably canned.

Then, he caught on as a reporter at ABC10 (for fewer peanuts)...at one point considered going back to TV6...then with the departure of ABC 10's news director Cynthia Thompson, he found himself appointed the new news director and anchor and who-knows-what-else (for a few more peanuts).

And now, less than a year into his tenure, he's off to Chicago in an entirely different role.

Ya gotta be flexible as a TV journalist. And willing to live on peanuts. Small market TV does not lead to riches.

Meantime, ABC 10, the little engine that could, will continue to chug forward. A new news director and anchor have yet to be named.
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AS IF POWERHOUSE TV 6 needed any more advantages...

The Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns TV6, recently announced that it's also taken ownership of WLUK in Green Bay. Yeah, the same WLUK that used to broadcast Fox programming and Green Bay Packer games in the UP.

None of that will change because Fox UP (also owned by Sinclair) now has rights to that, but the ownership change is significant because now the news departments of TV6 and Fox UP will be able to readily trade stories with WLUK. Together, they'll be offering blanket coverage of the UP-Green Bay region.

The rich get richer.
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BY NOW WE'VE all heard the dismaying news that this upcoming winter may be as bitterly cold as last winter. So says the Farmer's Almanac which claims an 80% accuracy rate.

So what says local weather guru Karl Bohnak? Surely, he'll dispel such nonsense.

Well, as a matter of fact...no.

He says water patterns in the Pacific Ocean point toward a cold winter. Looks like we'll have a weak El Nino which also lends itself to a cold winter.

There is a greater likelihood of an eastern US-based frigid winter, rather than a Midwest-based freeze, but here in the U.P, we're still likely to feel it.

Bohnak reminds us that we had a frigid winter in '95-'96, and that was followed by record-breaking cold in '96-'97, so there's precedent for this.

Swell.

One ray of sunshine here: September should be an average month, maybe even a bit warmer and sunnier than average.

Woohoo. Let's throw a beach party just before we head down to Getz's to buy our mittens and swampers.

You got news? Email me at briancabell@gmail.com

 

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