• Prairie State Games: A bad investment?

• Carl Madison makes no apologies

• The fight for Enos Park

In 2004, I started covering Springfield city government for The State Journal-Register. A plan pushed by the mayor and Convention and Visitors Bureau called for spending $215,000 to land “hosting rights” for an amateur sporting event known as the Prairie State Games.

I decided to investigate further and learned the Prairie State Games organization had some financial issues in the past. I wrote a series of stories about the organization, and eventually the mayor withdrew an ordinance approving the expenditure to lure the games here.

City to compete for sports festival / Prairie State Games could bring profit
May 11, 2004

The city is considering paying $215,000 to ensure Springfield is host to the Prairie State Games in 2005, 2006 and 2007.

Springfield is competing with five other Illinois cities in its bid to attract the amateur athletic competition and its estimated $12 million economic impact.

The Springfield City Council’s public affairs and safety committee will discuss an ordinance authorizing the bid at its meeting Monday. It could go before the full council the next day.

The $215,000 represents “host city fees” for three years: $70,000 for 2005 and 2006, and $75,000 for 2007.

The Prairie State Games, run by the not-for-profit Illinois Health and Sports Foundation, is the state’s largest amateur sports festival, according to the event’s Web site. Athletes from across the state compete in 28 Olympic-style events. The Web site indicates 7,000 athletes competed in 2003 and 13,000 people participated as coaches, officials, volunteers and spectators.

Interested cities requested bid packages from festival officials, and [...] Read the rest of this entry »

In April 2002 I was asked to write a profile of Carl Madison, the well-known and sometimes controversial leader of the Springfield chapter of the NAACP. Carl has since moved to Ohio, but he still keeps up on race issues in Abraham Lincoln’s hometown.

No apologies / Criticism part of local NAACP head Madison’s job
Sunday, April 14, 2002

Civil rights activist Dick Gregory once said that when black people need help, they call on two things - Jesus Christ and the NAACP.

In Springfield, when people call on the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, they get Carl Madison.

For the last five years, Madison, 37, has led the local chapter and brought attention to a variety of issues, including alleged gender bias in the fire department, alleged racial discrimination in the police department, alternative education for expelled students and recruitment of more minority teachers for Springfield schools.

It’s a job that has brought both challenges and criticism, enough so that Madison jokes that’s the reason he went out and bought a golden retriever puppy, to make sure he had a friend.

“It’s had its ups and downs. Everybody says being branch president is a tough job,” Madison says, sliding open his patio door to let 8-month-old Max into the yard for an afternoon romp.

When he began as NAACP president, Madison received two or three calls a day from people seeking help. He estimates he now receives about 25.

Some are from victims [...] Read the rest of this entry »

In 2001, about two months after I started working at The State Journal-Register, my editor asked me and a few other reporters to work on a package of stories about the struggling, historic Enos Park neighborhood just north of downtown Springfield.

I was the lead reporter and worked for about six months with photographer Kristen Schmid-Schurter documenting the neighborhood, its people, its challenges and its future.

We talked to a lot of residents, determined to preserve their neighborhood from criminals and absentee landlords and make it a safe, attractive place for people to raise families and grow old. We also investigated the number of boarded-up homes in the neighborhood, the police department’s attention to the area, the neighborhood association’s no-holds-barred approach and the history of Enos Park.

The result was a week-long series (Dec. 16-23, 2001) called “The Fight for Enos Park.”

Life in Enos Park / Putting the neighborhood back together

Buddy and Dawn Smith always thought their ideal neighborhood would be a small, modern, middle-class subdivision. Instead, they found their dream home in the heart of Springfield’s Enos Park neighborhood.

“I look over there (at the subdivision) now and I don’t even feel the same way,” Dawn said as she relaxed in her spacious two-story Victorian home in the 1100 block of North Fourth Street. “I look over at those houses and I think, ‘Those aren’t even in the same league as my house.’ ”

Just two blocks from the Smiths, another young [...] Read the rest of this entry »