Our town

I was shocked (still am a little) when Fort Wayne lost both its MCL cafeterias and the company apparently decided it didn't need to worry about a future location here. What, we don't have enough senior citizens in Fort Wayne looking for a good meal value? I still love the place and visit one in Indianapolis close to my sister's house occasionally.

This news is shocking in the same kind of way:

The shopping selection at Jefferson Pointe will soon be a little less sweet. The Krispy Kreme Doughnut store off Illinois Road will close on April 26.

Our "Rant" telephone line serves at least one useful purpose -- it provides a quick look at what people in town are collectively outraged over at any given moment. Right now, a lot of people calling in -- especially the women -- are beside themselves over Bobby Joe Flores, the molester who gave a 1-year-old an STD.

The idea that an originalist such as Clarence Thomas doesn't believe in the Bill of Rights is nothing short of preposterous, yet that's what The Journal Gazette tries to sell. In a short editorial today, the JG says that remarks made by Thomas at a March 31 event dedicated to the Bill of Rights suggested "that he was anything but supportive." What remarks were so scary? These:

From time to time, we feel the need to point out that the weekly poll we run on the editorial page is meant for entertainment only. It is not designed as a "scientific" poll, and we've never claimed it is. This is one of those times.

We can usually count on a couple of hundred votes for the poll, although we've passed the thousand mark a few times. We did a poll a few years ago about whether our newspaper should publish the county gun-carry-permit database online. Word was passed around on gun-enthusiast Web sites, and we got a few thousand votes.

A couple of dispatches from the economic-development front. The city could get a new hotel near Glenbrook:

Despite the challenging economy, a 6-million dollar hotel could be coming to the Glenbrook Mall area in Fort Wayne.

A Valparaiso-based company wants to situate an 89-room Towneplace Suites hotel next to an ice rink facility that's slated to be constructed over the summer months.

City Council President Tom Smith has gone and spoiled everything by peeking behind the curtain of the government expansion stimulus program (you'll have to watch the video to seem him saying it):

There will be money coming in to schools and police departments to help hire new people to do certain programs. But when that money runs out . . . they're calling that job creation, becasue the local taxpayers will keep funding those new positions.

Next Thursday is the home opener for the TinCaps at Harrison Square, and I might gently suggest that if you're not going to the game, you stay as far away from downtown as possible:

Another tragic consequence of the weak economy:

The city of Fort Wayne will not buy the old Omni Source land north of downtown.

The city had an option to buy the old industrial site for about 18 months hoping to help turn the real estate into a major commercial development.

But the city says it's no longer feasible to spend more than four million dollars to purchase the land because of its tight budget.

Ouch. We all know it's expensive to travel from the Fort Wayne airport. It's still unsettling to see it in black and white. Forbes had an article recently on the country's most expensive airports, ranked by cost per mile traveled. This blogger dug through the article and listed them all. The cheapest tend to be in the 14-16 cent range. Then there are these seven, tied for 11th-worst:

La Crosse Municipal (La Crosse, WI) — $0.36/mile

"No good deed goes unpunished" department: Piere's offers rides home to patrons who think they've had too much to drink to be able to drive safely. They gave such a ride to James Herald, but they didn't take him all the way home:

Herald was struck and injured after being dropped off.