The Lansing Star Online, Lansing, NY

Dec 28 2007

2007 Around Town

Dan Veaner

Friday, 28 December 2007

Judging chicken barbecue sauce at the 1st Baker Cup at Lansing Harbor Festival

Probably the two biggest stories in the Lansing Star were about Gimme Coffee opening a Lansing shop, and Regal Cinema opening 14 stadium theaters at the Shops at Ithaca Mall (that was when the mall changed its name.

Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stayed the first annual Lansing Harbor Festival. Despite a freak storm that literally snapped three telephone poles near the Lansing schools, and damage to tents that had been set up for the event, it was rescheduled for a week later and was a resounding success. The Lansing Community Council is already making plans for the second annual festival, scheduled for Saturday, August 23, 2008.

With the current controversy about the library vote it is easy to forget the triumphal reopening last February that gave Lansing its first look of the transformation from a dingy, crowded space to a full fledged library building. The $385,000 capital improvement project was entirely paid for by donations, meaning that when the library came up for a vote there was no mortgage or debt of any kind.

The North Cabin

Meanwhile, the John Joseph Inn and Elizabeth Restaurant opened this year. Resurrected literally from the ashes of Lansing landmark The Rose Inn, the new owners have created not only an inn and a restaurant, but a lifestyle that matches the elegance of the old inn with a friendly, family atmosphere all their own.

My favorite ongoing story is the sagea of Tompkins and Cayuga Counties' oldest log cabin and how it came home to Lansing this year. Originally built near Conlon and Searles Roads in 1749, it has been moved at least three times, and spent the last 50 years behind the Cayuga Museum in Auburn. This year it came home to Lansing, a fate that was anything but certain until Town councilman Bud Shattuck arranged to save it from demolition and the Lansing Highway Department dissembled and brought it back home. It has yet to be reassembled in a new location to be determined this winter.

All Saints Church Dedication

Finally you can't talk about 2007 without mentioning the dedication of the new All Saints Catholic Church. The Bishop of Rochester was only one of many celebrants who packed the church last October to consecrate it to God's service as a place of worship. A combined chorus led by Doreen Kelly Alsen was made up of All Saints singers along with those from neighboring Catholic parishes and Lansing United Methodist Church filled the sanctuary with joyous song to celebrate the official opening of the $1.7 million church.

----
v3i49