The Salina Journal from Salina, Kansas • Page 8

The Salina Journal Sunday, September 27,1987 Page 8 Experts say city can support just one mall (Continued from Page 7) continued commission opposition. Warmack's search for alternative financing again gave downtown proponents more time to continue work on a downtown mall. move seals fate In November 1983, Minnesota developer Orrin Ericson expressed interest in Salina's downtown. By February 1984, city commissioners had signed a $40,000 development agreement with Ericson's company, American Redevelopers Inc. The contract gave Ericson six months to draft a proposal that would create a covered downtown mall.

By this time, Warmack still had not secured financing. By summer he had reduced his industrial revenue bond request to $10 million. American Redevelopers's proposal hinged on landing J.C. Penney as an anchor tenant; however, the Penney company already was negotiating with Warmack and wanted nothing to do with a downtown mall. Penney's subsequently left downtown to become one of two anchors of Warmack's Central Mall.

Ericson said, as had Tucker before him, that Salina could support only one mall. If Central Mall was built, American Redevelopers would abandon its downtown Salina plans. By August, after a 19-day delay, the American Redevelopers report arrived and proved to be a disappointment to the downtown organization. The nine-page report was lacking. The estimated cost of a square-foot downtown mall $14.5 million did not include costs of utility relocation, property acquisi tion, demolition and clearance, and improved access to the downtown.

There was no estimate of public cost. The American Redevelopers plan collapsed when the developer failed to attract a national retail store to anchor a downtown mall. City reaches agreement This set up the compromise of Sept. 10,1984. The commission authorized the issuance of $10 million in industrial revenue bonds for the mall and in the same breath agreed to con- While construction crews worked throughout Salina's downtown, shoppers and workers have had to share the sidewalks.

Scott WHIIomi tribute $5 of sales tax money for every $1 raised by the downtown for a public improvement project. Graves was no longer on the commission then, but today thinks Salina's downtown was slighted. "I have a sense of frustration about the whole project. Manhattan got the ideal situation," she said. Manhattan's downtown mall is due to open next month.

"We haven't felt the full effects (downtown) of Central Mall yet," she said. "And it's not just downtown. The price is being paid in some of the other neighborhood centers." Duckers, who also was off the commission by September 1984, said he was not comfortable with spending public money the city's proceeds from the 1-cent countywide sales the downtown project. "I pushed hard for the sales tax for use in our (street maintenance). Not once did I dream it would go for anything other than the infrastructure.

It's not a prudent use of taxpayers' money," he said. Former Commissioner Joe Ritter said he felt the same way. "I was not satisfied. I just had a thing about spending that much money in downtown Salina," he said. Other former commissioners look back on the compromise in a different light.

Fortino Bonilla, an ardent downtown supporter, said he is pleased with the compromise, even though he reversed his stand on the use of industrial revenue bonds for the mall. "The downtown would really be in bad shape (without the public financial said. Without the match, Bonilla said he would have held to his earlier position and voted against the industrial revenue bonds. For John Burgess, events ended on a relatively happy note. "I think a good compromise came out of it," he said.

"We retained our basic look and function," he said of the downtown. Jury out on mall's effect Once the mall became a reality, the hope was that some of the estimated $30 million in additional annual retail trade the mall was supposed to attract would slop over into downtown and other shopping areas. Roth, a mall supporter who said he didn't have regrets about the September compromise then or now, said the spill-over ben efit already is occurring. Roth said his retail clothing business has increased. "Our business is ahead of last year and last year was ahead of the year before," he said.

"That tells me people are in our town." Although he doesn't regret his vote on the compromise, he laments the delays in getting the mall built. "My regret is that it took so long to happen. The city suffered because of turmoil and the loss of retail business." Duckers agreed. "It's a shame we couldn't have had the mall built five years ago. The downtown would have suffered its body blow and be back doing something," he said.

Burgess said that Salina at least did something with its central business district to prevent its transformation into a ghost town. He said the task now is to work on attracting new tenants to fill up the vacant stores created in part by the mall and the development it spawned near South Ninth and Magnolia. According to one account, perhaps a third of the available retail, commercial and professional space in downtown Salina is vacant. Marketing Director Charlotte Chapman of the Salina Area Chamber of Commerce said more than 300,000 square feet of downtown space is unused. Various studies of the downtown peg total space at 800,000 to 900,000 square feet.

Burgess said the suburban retailing pressure means change for existing downtown businesses. "If you want to do business like you did 50 years ago, that's fine," he said. "But it won't work in today's world." Soviet refugee plans reunion with brother after mother dies PITTSBURGH (AP) A woman who had hoped to be reunited with her mother in the Soviet Union 44 years after they were separated by Nazi soldiers said Saturday she has learned her mother is dead, but Her only brother is alive. Galina Petrova Tokarsky, 63, of suburban Wilkins Township, received a letter Sept. 19 saying her mother was alive and looking for her.

Coincidentally, she had already planned a trip to the Soviet Union. Mrs. Tokarsky said she placed a call to her mother's home Monday and when the call finally went through Friday, her brother answered. "I said, 'Mama, and he said, 'No, it's my brother, and he told me that Mama has passed away," she said. "I couldn't find the words to say very much.

I lost all the words in the speech I was going to say. "After 44 years, it's too emotional to use the words." She said the connection was poor and she had to struggle to understand everything her brother said in Russian during the brief conversation, and she could not determine how or when her mother died. Mrs. Tokarsky said she last saw her mother, Maria Petrova, who would have been at least 87, and her brother in Smolensk on May 25, 1943, when Nazi soldiers took her at age 19 for forced labor in Germany. Mrs.

Tokarsky did not try to return to Smolensk after the war and hadn't known what had happened to her family. She assumes her father is dead. She plans to leave Oct. 4 for two weeks in Moscow, a trip she had planned long before hearing of her family. The Soviet Embassy told her Monday that it will take a month to clear the paperwork needed to authorize a 250-mile side trip from Moscow to where her mother was living in Bryansk, a city of 394,000.

Mrs. Tokarsky said the delay might have meant she would not have been able to see her mother, if she had been alive, but it won't stop her from seeing her brother if he travels to Moscow for a reunion. She said she never got to say goodbye to her brother, who is about two years younger than she is. "He wasn't home when they took me away," she said in a telephone interview. "This way we can say hello to each The letter she received Sept.

19, from a secretary to the mayor of Erlangen, West Germany, outside Nuremberg, said Maria Petrova had written to the mayor for help finding her daughter. Navy tries to aid wife of sailor WASHINGTON (AP) A Navy wife who told advice columnist Ann Landers that she was considering suicide because of problems at home after her husband was sent to the Persian Gulf contacted a support group Saturday and said she is "doing fine," the Navy said. "She called in to one of the local Navy family service centers here in Norfolk, said Joseph Mowery, spokesman for the U.S. Atlantic Fleet. "What she said is she's doing fine and she has also contacted the ombudsman for the ship that her husband is on," the chief petty officer said of the woman who signed the letter to Ann Landers as "Daisy in Va." The ombudsman network is a support group for spouses and dependents of the 1,600 sailors on the five ships out of Norfolk that have been sent to the war-torn Persian Gulf re-.

gion. Mowery said the Navy was "certain that this is the son" who wrote a plaintive letter to the columnist, al-, though he said he didn't know if anyone had contacted the woman in person. He refused to say whether the woman is really named? "Daisy" or to provide any de-'" tails about her. "I cannot' comment on that," he said. The Navy started seeking "Daisy in Va." early Friday after the column appeared in that day's newspapers.

The letter said the woman was married for 11 years, had three children ages 10,7 and 5 and she "simply can't manage the kids." "No matter how hard I try, they make my life hell," she wrote. "Night after night I think of ways to kill myself." The letter described her husband as "a career Navy? 5 man (with) more than years of service" who left suddenly for the Persian Gulf, where U.S. forces are protect- i ing reflagged Kuwaiti tankers plying the waters endangered by the 7-year-old Iran-Iraq war. Capt. Brent Baker, chief spokesman for the Navy's At- lantic Fleet, said Friday that i the Navy began using the om- budsman's network to try to find "Daisy" and that the Navy's Medical Command in Norfolk was alerted.

Atlantic cools force of Hurricane Emily HAMILTON, Bermuda (AP) Hurricane Emily lost strength Saturday as it whirled across shipping lanes in the North Atlantic's cool waters. Hundreds of miles to the south, Bermudans tended 111 people injured when Emily crossed the island. Government spokesman Bryan Darby stressed that most injuries were minor and that damage to about 2,500 buildings, mostly houses, was slight. Emily hit Bermuda Friday morning with winds gusting up to 112 mph. Up to 70 percent of the island remained without power Saturday because of downed utility poles and felled trees that knocked down power lines.

Premier John Swan organized a task force to coordinate repairs and placed about 1,500 police reserves, prisoners, public works crews and volunteers at the disposal of the Bermuda Electric Light Darby said. Electricity was restored to Hamilton, the capital where 25,000 of Bermuda's 57,145 residents live, hours after Emily swept through on its northward path. Darby estimated the entire island would be back on full power by Wednesday. About 1,000 telephones were still out of order. SALINA'S NEWEST LOCATION FOR MEN'S CLOTHING CLOTHING FOK MEN GALAXY CENTER IN SOUTH SALINA FLORSHEI CAN YOU REALLY AFFORD ANYTHING LESS $3997 VARIOUS STYLES Savings from to ONLY 6 DAYS LEFT FLORSHEIM OVER! jOOQpAiRs Entire Stock Included HURRY! Salt Ends Dot, 3rd HIM eVt to 13, Wldthi, Doublo A to TrlpU In Itook.

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