Forget Harborview…government advice, 41 years ago

By the fall of 1976, La Crosse had spent years trying to decide what to build in the old warehouse district between 2nd Street and the riverfront.  A shopping mall, condominiums?  Dozens of old buildings had been torn down, leaving a sandy lot that was used for the Bicentennial festival that year.  The area director of HUD, John Kane, advised the city to get out of the Harborview project to save millions of dollars.  A year later, a referendum was passed to build the La Crosse Center on that land.
 
Democrat Al Baldus got a second term in Congress from the 3rd District that year, defeating La Crosse’s Dr. Adolf Gundersen.  La Crosse District Attorney Ed Nix was not so lucky.  Nix got into scraps with politicians and the media during two short years in office, and he was replaced as DA by future circuit judge Michael Mulroy.  Nix later became a municipal judge.
 
Georgia’s Jimmy Carter won a close presidential election that November, defeating incumbent Gerald Ford, who had been chief executive since Richard Nixon resigned two years earlier.  Ford was the first president voted out of office in more than 40 years, since Herbert Hoover.  Ford’s loss came the week after Chevy Chase made his last appearance as a regular cast member on “Saturday Night Live.”  Coincidence?!?  Chase became SNL’s first breakout star with his klutzy Ford impersonation, and as anchor of “Weekend Update.”  He has said that he left the show after just one year because his girlfriend wanted to live in California instead of New York.  Chevy takes off in 1976, yesterday in La Crosse.