Opposes Park Ave. plan
After concerns over the scaled-back Park Avenue mixed-use center at University and Markham, the Hillcrest Residents Association board voted Monday to oppose the plan “in its current incarnation,” HRA president Hank Bates says.
The Park Avenue center has devolved from an urban retail-residential-office development to a shopping center anchored by Target and Dick’s Sporting Goods, critics of the current plan say. Mayor Mark Stodola was said to be in meetings with members of Strode Property Group on Tuesday. Strode’s planned unit development, approved by the Planning Commission over the objections of its staff, is to go before the city board of directors July 1. A multi-story office building is no longer in the plans and the design is at odds with the design overlay district, which would require smaller parking fields, sidewalks, glass facades and other “town center” elements.
Swinging
Larry Audas, general manager at KTHV Channel 11, reports that he’s received a number of written and phoned complaints about the new CBS show “Swingtown,” which airs at 9 p.m. Thursdays. Created by the same minds behind Showtime’s Mormon polygamy drama “Big Love,” “Swingtown” follows the promiscuous adventures of a group of Chicago suburbanites, circa 1976.
“What the viewers are writing in about is the thematic material in the program,” Audas said. “What I tell them is that the networks are charged with delivering programming to us that meets FCC guidelines, and we’re charged with ensuring that programming airs.”
Audas admits that “Swingtown” is provocative. “The thematic material in ‘Swingtown’ obviously does trigger concerns and discussion, and we’re receiving those concerns and feedback and forwarding that to CBS,” he said.
Girls gone wild
A gossip column in the Washington Examiner reports that Paula Jones and Gennifer Flowers have teamed up to milk a little more cash out of their long-ago roles in Clinton scandals. They’ve filmed seven video segments, $1.99 per pop, to discuss their time with Bill Clinton.
In a segment called “Two Chicks Chatting,” the column said “the two joke extensively about Bill’s, er, physical characteristics….”
Flowers says her infamy was no ticket to riches and adds, “What is fame without dignity?” Indeed. This from the woman who wrote in her autobiography about using a kitchen bowl when nature called while she was in the midst of a national radio interview?