Many Door County residents are abuzz over the proposed expansion of Bjorklunden, Lawrence University’s Northern Campus on Bailey’s Harbor, that calls for the installation of a casino and gentleman’s club.
University officials quibbled with the definition of planned venture as a “casino” or a “gentleman’s club.” “It will be more like a ‘cabaret,'” explained Rick Peterson, director of news services, “and many students are quite excited for the new entertainment employment opportunities the site will offer.”
“Did I mention the fabulous volunteer work Lawrence University students perform day in and day out?” Peterson added.
The controversial plan came out in a recent investigation by the Door County Advocate. While the renovation was announced last summer, it took investigative journalists half of a year to comb through the entire floor plan of the 8 square-acre building. Most of the site will sit where the woods once were to allow more room for the university’s guests to experience nature in a comfortable, temperature-controlled, bug free environment with cash bars once every 100 feet.
Community activist Ollie Swenson does not take issue with the site as a whole. “It’s the university’s to ruin as it sees fit, I think,” Swenson said, “but I think ‘Winifred’s Chapel’ and ‘Donald’s Taxidermist’ are two abominations, frankly, to everything we hold sacred.”
Winifred’s Chapel and Donald’s Taxidermist, respectively, are names for two of the controversial proposed adjoining buildings to the renovation, named for Winifred and Donald Boynton, who bequeathed the property to Lawrence.
The “Chapel” will be, as Peterson says, a “cabaret” that is licensed to double as a gentleman’s club during Boynton Society fundraisers. Donald’s Taxidermist is an indoor shooting range that is fully convertible to a casino at the request of summer visitors. Entry into the sites will be available for any modest, six-figure donation to Lawrence. “Pending zoning meetings, I really can’t say much,” said university vice president Greg Volk, “but trust me: it will be worth the donation.”
Some faculty members have defended Winifred’s Chapel, saying that it would provide excellent, cozy performance space to student performers or to budding, of-age dancers. And as for the shooting range, university officials privately remarked that it was the only demand of Bjorklunden director Mark Breseman, who has been growing increasingly erratic as his friendship with the ghost of Mr. Grady, who had taken care of the property for the Boynton’s, deepens and his plans for a novel have devolved into hundreds of sheets of repeated sentences.
Rumors that assistant director Ben Meyer’s young son is clairvoyant and senses danger could not be confirmed since telegraph lines up north have not been working.
In the end, though, all the concern could be much ado about nothing. Swenson and the editor of The Advocate have reportedly struck a deal with university officials that would allow the site to go through unchallenged. Under the plan, Door County residents would be allowed to shoot, “visually experience nude movement art” (as President Beck called it), and gamble for a nominal fee as long as they did dishes and cleaned all the hair out of the shower when they were done. And the university is responsible for expelling all Illinois residents from the premises.
The renovation may benefit Lawrence University’s coffers and Bjorklunden’s property value, but all sides agree that the chief benefit is to Chef Steve.
“Boobs, bullets, and black jack. Tits, twenty-twos, tarnation! Ain’t it good to be alive? Hey, sweetie girl, you like basketball? Ya evah seen a five foot man shoot in a one-eyed jack from three feet away? High-yo, no? Do you want to?! AHAHAHA!
yBjorklunden’s sexy new makeover DO NOT USE
