Yesterday in La Crosse
The voters decide to build a civic center, 40 years ago
Just before Thanksgiving of 1977, a referendum for a new convention center in La Crosse passed by a 2-to-1 margin…with about 6700 people voting “yes.” The city council had voted to spend almost $10 million dollars to build a civic center, a parking ramp, and a skyway to link the center to the proposed Radisson Hotel. Radisson said it would only build a motel on the Harborview land if the city provided a 4000-seat convention center, and a skyway, and a ramp. Some opponents on the council suggested that most people in La Crosse wouldn’t have a reason to go to the civic center.
Innocent until proven guilty? A University of Minnesota political science student polled juries in Hennepin County to find out how biased they might be. Joseph Barbeau’s survey discovered that one-fourth of the Twin Cities jurors believed that defendants are almost never innocent, and one-third claimed they would have convicted a defendant just after hearing the opening statement, without reviewing any other evidence.
Richard Dreyfuss had the #1 movie in America four weeks in a row that fall. Three of those weeks, that movie was “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” the Spielberg space adventure about aliens visiting Earth. The other #1 for Dreyfuss was “The Goodbye Girl” with Marsha Mason…and that comedy won Dreyfuss the Best Actor Oscar for 1977…40 years ago, Yesterday in La Crosse.