City Spotlight | Paris | Season 2 | Episode 9
>>Rameen Karbassioon: Coming up on City Spotlight it's all things Paris.
We will visit with the mayor of Paris, Craig Smith.
We will recap the 35th annual Honey Bee Festival, the latest on retail development on Jasper Street, and we will take you inside the brand new Paris High School.
That's next on City Spotlight.
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And I'd like to thank all of you for joining us for another edition of City Spotlight and I'd like to welcome back the mayor of Paris, Craig Smith, for coming back on the program.
Craig, welcome.
>>Craig Smith: Thank you very much; it's nice to be back.
>>Rameen Karbassioon: It's been a few months since we've had you back on and this past weekend, we're taping this on a Monday, Honey Bee Festival, 35th annual Honey Bee Festival in Paris took place.
How did it go?
>>Craig Smith: It was wonderful, lots of people there.
It's a multiple day, 3-day event.
There are tents downtown.
We had pancakes.
We had beer.
We had dancing going on.
The fairground had a lot of activities.
There were a lot of vendors there, probably as big of a crowd as we've ever had.
The parade was very big this year because politicians were in it this year.
So, a lot of election politicians were in the parade.
It was a great time, [I had a ball].
>>Rameen Karbassioon: And hopefully we have a few images we can share from what took place there in Paris this past weekend.
We've had other festivals we've covered on different towns here in the summer on City Spotlight.
35th annual, it's something with longevity, the Honey Bee Festival.
What does the Honey Bee Festival mean to Paris?
>>Craig Smith: The Honey Bee Festival really started back because Gene Killion started a honeybee business almost 100 years ago and it's one of the finest makers of honey in the United States.
They are now going out of business but we will continue to have Honey Bee Festivals for another 35 years because we've worked it into homecoming for the high school, a lot of reunions class, reunions use this time to come back and see Paris and see how things have changed.
So it's a great event for our community, we'll continue to have it for a long time.
>>Rameen Karbassioon: As we start fall here and we had you on right at the tail end of spring, how did the summer 2015 go in Paris for you?
>>Craig Smith: Summer was great from an economic standpoint.
NAL and Simonton did a major increase in their lines.
They've been hiring and continue to continue to hire into the fall.
During summer we had a lot of activity on Jasper Street.
We've had some new retail businesses open.
R.P Lumber opened.
And just recently we had a new housing development that it just opened Maple Ridge too.
So the summer was really great from an economic standpoint and also the town was looking beautiful.
The parks looked wonderful.
We have 13 parks.
They were very active.
The splash park was in it's second year so it was doing well as well.
>>Rameen Karbassioon: We talked about the retail development on Jasper Street back in June.
Is there a lot of room to grow there?
And are you pleased with what you've seen pop up there recently?
>>Craig Smith: There's a lot of room to grow but we like what we've seen because what we're seeing are companies coming in and then taking buildings that have not been actively used, renovating them.
R.P took an old building that used to be Kmart, that's how long ago it was, and it's been totally refashioned.
They bought the entire lot and it looks much better.
Taco Bell is there.
There is a lot of growth area for retail and we work with people because that's part of our tiff.
We have 2 tiffs in Paris and Jasper Street is one of them.
>>Rameen Karbassioon: I want to talk a little bit about just basically tell me a little nuts and bolts about the All Abilities Playground.
I believe that's eventually going to be at the Twin Lakes.
What is it and why is this something we can look forward to?
>>Craig Smith: Well you know it's great because it follows in line with the Challengers League where we have a softball, baseball through the summer for the kids who have disabilities.
Well this would be a park for kids who have disabilities.
It would be right next door to the splash park.
So it would be a great fit.
They're currently in their fund raising.
They're at 25%.
They're going to beat the drums.
They're going to go out in the community.
It's going to be a great thing for children who have disabilities and it's a park that we've needed for sometime.
>>Rameen Karbassioon: There's already a lot of beautiful things there at the Twin Lakes, you've got Laker Field so that would be another nice edition.
>>Craig Smith: Another edition to beautiful Twin Lakes.
>>Rameen Karbassioon: Excellent.
And I've asked several city leaders on other episodes of City Spotlight about the state budget.
As we tape here it's still not been passed.
I feel like I'm beating an old drum by saying that repetitively.
When you look at what's going on in Springfield, time passes a long whether it be a day or weeks or months, what do you think about what all is going on there?
And how does it affect Paris in now and moving forward?
>>Craig Smith: Municipalities per se are not impacted as much as schools and as much as places like HRC who help people who have disabilities or health issues.
With us our money is going to come in whether they have a budget or not.
Police protection and fire protection, the motor fuel that'll come in.
But where it's going to hurt communities is across the boarder on the other budgets that aren't protected like the City Budgets are.
So we still think it's time to compromise.
It's time to come up with a budget.
Sooner or later schools are going to see the hurt.
We have a very active health community in Paris.
It's going to be hurt by late payments.
So we're all still pushing for everybody to get leveled heads, figure out how to work the budget out, and get the budget done for the sake of the state.
>>Rameen Karbassioon: Again, as time passes a long and things don't progress with the state budget in Springfield how do you make adjustments on the fly with you're trying to accomplish because some of those funds you're hoping to have, or we're hoping to have.
>>Craig Smith: Well for economic development, just to give you an example, if the state cannot give tax abatements or the state cannot send funding through the economic development portion that they have which is effected by the budget, then it takes away an arm that we use to try and get businesses to come to Paris.
And we've been very successful, as we've told you before and some of our earlier meetings.
But without that that's going to hurt Illinois communities a lot through their economic development.
It's also going to hurt through health benefits because people are not going to get the money paid for the services.
So they're going to have to start laying people off and we have a very active human resource center that takes care of a lot of people who are in need.
And so that's going to effect communities.
That's why we need a budget as soon as possible.
>>Rameen Karbassioon: Let's turn our attention to the new Paris High School.
>>Craig Smith: Yes.
>>Rameen Karbassioon: And as we talked with you and Kathy Rhodes back in June it was the week leading up to the opening of the high school.
And since then it's obviously been open, students are attending classes there.
And later in the program we'll have a nice little tour with principal Dave Meister of the high school.
I was blown away, you guys told me about it, I saw some images, pictures that we shared on the program, but I got to see it first hand and wow what a facility Paris has now for their students.
And the fine arts center, you were absolutely correct.
>>Craig Smith: You know it's hard to look at a picture of the outside to get an idea, a feel of what this facility is really like once you walk through it the state of the art classrooms, state of the art vocational.
We haven't had a closed campus in Paris, Illinois ever and we do have one now.
So if the kids are active in any kind of other programs other than education it's right there.
The fine arts building, again, we cannot tell you how beautiful that is.
And I equated it last time I was here to any play, any stage in Chicago, this is just as nice and we're going to start our concert series and plays this fall.
And if anybody has a chance to come to Paris and check withe Chamber of Commerce about what concerts will be shown there it's really worth the drive.
It's a beautiful facility and we couldn't be happier.
>>Rameen Karbassioon: And the location.
It's on the very North end of town, kind of a little bit off the road.
They were there working on the road when I first saw back in June and again when I taped with Dave Meister back in late August.
That part of Paris is there anything that you can build off of with the high school being there or is the high school going to kind of be that Northern most part for a while?
>>Craig Smith: No I think that area will be an area where commercial folks will look at something.
Fast foods, grocery stores.
We also looked at that area because we're hoping that through [solidation] that some of the other school districts that are much smaller than Paris, for example Chrisman, Shiloh, their only graduating some of 20 people.
So if they come, this on the North side is perfect for a map where you can draw in students from the North area of the county.
So that was one of the reasons as well.
And on that end of town we have some more residential areas, but we've not had a lot of commercial areas.
So we're hoping that this will grow into more of just the high school.
We also had a 1544th out there and that's the National Guard unit.
And right now they are working on making that their center for all of their facilities as well.
>>Rameen Karbassioon: And as we're sitting here talking about the new high school I remember asking you about what's going on with the old school.
It's sitting there, is there any progress on what might be happening there?
>>Craig Smith: As a matter of fact the city took title to the high school.
We did that for a couple of reasons.
The main reason was we didn't want it just to sit there and become a dilapidated building.
A lot of people who around this area and who played ball remember Eveland Gym.
Eveland Gym was built back in the heyday when Paris was 1 in all the state tournaments.
So it was built back in the 1940s.
At that time it was the most beautiful, spectacular gym in the area.
It still is.
So what we've done, and we've just done that recently in the last 2 weeks, we've named the facilities manager.
We're going to renovate Eveland Gym.
We're going to air condition it.
We're going to turn it into a community center.
We're going to have young kids playing basketball; people who want to use it for wedding receptions, whatever.
So that part of the building we've already started on.
The other part of the newer building is the [voke] educational building and we're working on that to maybe set up a training center.
The old high school will be the issue.
It's over 100 years old.
We're now getting architects and engineers to go in and give us an idea.
Can it be saved?
If it can be saved, what kind of money are we going to have to put in it for renovating it to use?
But right now it's the city of Paris that owns it and we're looking at a lot of options for that.
And we think that can be a great facility and a great location for a lot of good things going on in Paris.
>>Rameen Karbassioon: So much to follow up on that and many other things going on in Paris, the new high school and I'd like to thank you Craig for coming on the program.
Craig Smith, Mayor of Paris, thank you very much for joining us on City Spotlight again.
>>Craig Smith: Thanks so much for having me.
>>Rameen Karbassioon: And coming up next on City Spotlight we'll take you on a tour of the brand new Paris High School, but first, let's take a look at some of the upcoming activities going on in Paris.
[music playing] And we're back on City Spotlight; we're outside the new Paris High School in Paris, Illinois.
We're here with the principle of Paris High School Dace Meister.
Dave thank you for joining us on City Spotlight.
>>Dave Meister: You're welcome.
>>Rameen Karbassioon: And I got to interview Mayor Smith and Kathy Rhodes back in June on a previous episode of City Spotlight and it was the week leading up to the opening of the new high school.
It's very exciting and we're taping this in the later parts of August.
School has been open how long?
>>Dave Meister: About 2 and a half weeks.
>>Rameen Karbassioon: 2 and a half weeks.
What's been the reception of the students and the staff and yourself to everybody being in the building and fully operational?
>>Dave Meister: We're very excited.
Students are very enthusiastic about being here.
The staff is enthusiastic.
It's been a great start to the school year.
It's an incredible learning environment and we're just lucky to be able to take advantage of it.
>>Rameen Karbassioon: Now the old Paris High School is still up in downtown Paris.
107 years, is my math correct on that?
>>Dave Meister: Correct.
>>Rameen Karbassioon: Ok, very good.
The idea for the new building, when did it start and how long did it take to complete?
>>Dave Meister: The conceptualization of this building probably started around 2011.
The community ran 2 referendums with the 2 school districts and they were both very successful.
And incoordination with the state grants and a private trust we were able to put together the funding to create this.
>>Rameen Karbassioon: And everything is on 1 campus here, as we know.
The old Paris High School landscape athletic fields were broken up but everything is all in 1 spot.
>>Dave Meister: That's correct.
Everything is here and it's really a pleasure to come out here in the evening and see all the things going on between football practice, volley ball practice, the band, cross country all taking place in 1 location.
It's really a great sight.
>>Rameen Karbassioon: And the location, we're kind of North of town.
Are we technically in the Paris city limits?
>>Dave Meister: Technically we are in city limits here at Paris High School.
>>Rameen Karbassioon: Ok very good.
And the location, why this location?
>>Dave Meister: Well the location was selected simply because the city provided this location to the 2 districts.
And it's a wonderful location on the outside of town that allowed us to put all our facilities out here in 1 place.
>>Rameen Karbassioon: And we're going to take a look at some of these facilities here on a little tour.
Dave is going to walk us through a few of the places at Paris High School.
Talk about what you guys were trying to achieve with this layout and obviously you're very happy with how it turned out.
>>Dave Meister: We wanted to create an environment that showed that we had a total high school program.
We have a vocational center.
We have the humanities center.
We've got arts and sciences and also the hard sciences as well.
So the Paris board is committed to a total comprehensive high school program and the building is representation of that.
>>Rameen Karbassioon: And the last question before we go on a little tour of the high school, for the town the size of Paris in Central Illinois and in these tough economic times to have a brand new structure what does that mean and say about Paris?
>>Dave Meister: I think it shows commitment to education of the youth.
It shows a commitment to the future.
And it shows that Paris is doing what it needs to do to be very competitive in the 21st century.
>>Rameen Karbassioon: Alright and as we promised we're going to go on a little tour of Paris High School.
Where are we going to start Dave?
>>Dave Meister: I think we'll start in the gym and then we'll make our way around the building to finish up in the theater.
Ok this is a 2,300 feet gymnasium.
It allows for 3 practice courts.
There are dividers up in the ceiling that come down and divide the 3 courts into 3 practice facilities as well as 3 different rooms for PE if we so choose.
2,300 is what the seating is in the stands.
We brought along some of the memorabilia that went along with our Eveland Gym.
A lot of the state series trophies and awards are here in our gymnasium as well as Edgar the Tiger who is sat at midcourt in Eveland Gym for many years has made the trip out here to the new school as well.
Kids feel the commitment and the participation we've had this summer has been really really strong.
Once we opened this weight room we see attendance go up and our kids are very proud of the fact that they have this kind of equipment.
We have a network that is very very robust.
It has a virtual desktop environment which means we can allows all of our staff and students to log in to a particular desktop.
It isn't dependent on the computer that they are using.
That can be a cheap netbook or a very expensive Apple computer and they all log into the same desktop.
We can log into it from home or wherever there is Internet access.
So we're very proud of the technology that we've been able to put here.
We have an IPTV system that will allow us to broadcast our own product.
This is our kitchen and one of the things that are a big change for our kids here at Paris High School is a closed campus.
At the old school we only closed the campus for underclassmen freshman and sophomores.
All of our students are eating here now so we are trying to cook things that are palatable.
Things the kids want to eat so they want to stay here.
The cafeteria is one of the most popular places in the building.
I kind of went for a restaurant feel in our cafeteria.
We wanted the kids to feel like it was some place that they would go if they weren't in school.
I guess we hired some folks, that's what they do is restaurants and they did a fantastic job at branding our, what we call, the Den in Paris High School.
This cafeteria has a sound system that we are able to use.
We can put on a program here with a microphone.
We can also play music; we play music at lunchtime.
We have the 3 TVs on the walls in here that we can pump sound, the programming off of the computer based TVs into the sound systems so kids will be able to watch programing.
Every one of those TVs can be plugged into as well by a PC.
So if a teacher or a student wants to project what they're doing on their desktop they can do so on the TV.
We actually have a couple fewer classrooms, but we have more specialized classrooms that are more usable in this building so we didn't lose any space.
On the exterior of every classroom in the opening there is a plaque that shows the dedication of the room and the donors who gave to furnish the room.
Vocational center, welding.
A couple classes dedicated to FFA as well as a green house.
Consumer sciences, we've got a full cooking lab with 5 kitchens, and the clothing lab.
What you're looking at here is the media center.
The media center is set up to do regular analog of paperback books, paper based books as well as books kids can check out on their devices as well as several presentation areas for full classes in here.
On the very back of their on the outside there's a patio, some furniture for outdoor use.
The curved hallway with brick piers looking out into the courtyard is one of the architectural features that are really unique to this building.
You're not going to see another building like this.
It was designed completely independent of any other project that the architects had done.
One of the goals we had was to get as much natural light into the building as we possibly could.
There are several skylights in the cafeteria that provide natural lighting and every classroom has windows.
The hallways are open to the outside as well.
We've got a baseball diamond as well as a softball diamond, 8 tennis courts.
Our football field and track are here as well and we've got a cross-country course that has been laid out on the property.
We've got 65 acres and I've actually got some woods and the trail runs down through the woods close to the lake here and it's really a fun course to run.
We aren't spread out all over town like we were and it gives us a chance to see what all of our students are doing.
And they can see what each other are doing too and it's bound to breed success.
We're very fortunate to have all of our facilities in one place.
This is the room that has really connected us to Eastern Illinois University.
The science staff at Eastern Illinois University has kind adopted us.
They have taken on some of our students and are doing independent research projects with a couple of our students as well as committed to send a professor over here at least once a month to talk to our students.
And we're really excited about the partnership that we have [forged] with the science department at Eastern Illinois University.
This is kind of the dry side for physics, which you see over here in this corner, are a couple 3D printers.
This is a large presentation area with a big screen that you see maybe on CNN where they can touch it and move the maps and do things like that.
You see on the other side of the building where we saw the glass wall, this one is just partly open and then the extended learning area outside of it.
It's both kind of a lounge area but it's also an area where you can send groups of kids to work on group projects.
Kids can spread out their materials and talk with one another and they can use the Wi-Fi that's here and connect to screens and show each other what's on their desktop and share in those ways digitally.
This is the art room.
This is the band room or the band complex, the music complex.
We also have an ensemble room where our choir meets.
This is equipment storage and uniform storage down this hallway.
And then the band rehearsal room.
Sound wise this is a really really nice room.
The first time I watched the kids play in here it was kind of the realization that "Wow, this really sounds neat."
And then you can see the looks on their faces, "wow he's going to be hearing everything I do."
It isolates sound so well in here that the director can really hear what the different pieces are doing during a song.
So it's really a nice facility for them.
>>Rameen Karbassioon: Where are we now Dave?
>>Dave Meister: This is the Paris theater fine arts.
And what you're beginning to see are the sets going up for Arsenic and Old Lace, which will be our drama student's first production here in the new theater.
This is something that you walk in it and every time you walk in it you still kind of pinch yourself saying, "Yes, we are still in Paris."
This is a facility that even when we dreamed about having a theater I don't know that any of us dreamed quite this grandiose plan.
It's really turned out very nice.
I think it will be a destination.
It's got the capability to be a professional theater and as well as a teaching theater.
And we are already starting a season of productions.
The first season is going to be some small acts and movies that we're putting on here.
In fact our first official event is going to be playing the movie Mary Poppins.
We've got a couple live performances coming on so it's going to be an exciting time.
The reality is here now.
The long process, the meetings, the construction process is over with and now the kids are here and it's real.
And it's a sense of great pride that this community was able to put the resources together and ban together to forage the possibility of this building being here and then seeing the project through it gives the community a great deal of pride.
>>Rameen Karbassioon: I'd like to thank the principal of Paris High School, Dave Meister, for giving us a tour of this brand new facility here in Paris, Illinois.
And that'll wrap it up for the edition of City Spotlight, we'll see you next time.
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We live where we work, and are proud to support the communities we serve.
More information available at consolidated.com.
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