Monday, March 13, 2000
Lebanon shapes party plans
Bicentennial will center on village green
BY CINDI ANDREWS
The Cincinnati Enquirer
LEBANON — City bicentennial plans are picking up speed, with a tentative decision expected this week on a hot-air balloon race. The complete rundown of events is to go to City Council by the end of the month.
The 200th anniversary of the settling of Lebanon takes place in 2002.
“It's going to be like a yearlong festival,” said Gerald Miller, president of the bicentennial committee and owner of a downtown antiques shop.
The committee hopes to create a Colonial Williamsburg-like Heritage Square as the centerpiece of the celebration. The project, a partnership with the Lebanon Conservancy Foundation, would take up the block bounded by Main, Mechanic, Mulberry and Cherry streets.
It would include green space, parking and houses. Houses on the block already and a couple of old ones moved there would get face lifts and likely be used for residences, offices or shops, said Marilyn Haley, president of the foundation and a bicentennial committee member.
The foundation is especially interested in restoring a Queen Anne-style house at Cherry and Mulberry streets that is thought to have been built in 1854 or 1855.
Owned by the city, it was to be torn down last fall, but the foundation persuaded the city to wait and reassess its future.
The foundation hopes to get grants to fix up the house as a birthday present to Lebanon.
“It's not one of the great houses, but it should not be torn down for new buildings, that's for sure,” Mrs. Haley said. “It's a style that needs to be saved. ... It's a simple house.”
Since 1954, 143 old hous es and 46 old commercial buildings in Lebanon's historic districts have been torn down, Mr. Miller said.
The effort to save the Cherry Street house is part of a push to reverse that trend.
The committee's other big bicentennial project is the hot-air balloon competition. Members will find out this week whether there's time to arrange one this August, and they expect to have one in 2001 as a buildup to a balloon race during the bicentennial.
Other, smaller events are in the works. The goal is to have one each month in 2002, said Jean Ponder, a committee member. They include a ball, a parade, a garden tour with a bicentennial theme and an antique car rally.
The committee will present its plans at council's March 28 meeting.
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