Letter: Am I a naive dreamer?

Am I a naive dreamer?

I’ve been here long enough to remember the old Jerome Hotel (remember the belly dancer?) and the old Wheeler Opera House (remember the basement flooding and 10,000 dead mice having to be disposed of?). After two fires and a lot of research, the Wheeler was restored (close to) its original elegance. Both old buildings are beautiful, although somewhat out of reach except for flings or special occasions for ordinary working folks trying to survive and raise families here.

What a profoundly compassionate, beautiful and balanced idea it is to restore City Hall (or the Armory Building) to its original use as a community meeting place and ballroom on its upper floors. A “regular folks” type of place. I visualize St. Mary’s St. Patricks Day Dinner with a ballroom or the Elks on party night. That would be fair, wouldn’t it? It would balance out, somewhat, the giant wicker basket a couple of blocks away we’ll probably be stuck with forever and give this old mining town the non-elite (although they’d be welcomed, too) some place they could relate to as a community. Just a normal, hard-working, family-raising community. Am I a naive dreamer?

Pat Milligan

Aspen