Hope fading for saving Emerson It's understandable why some people want to save the Emerson School. The time is past when we demolish buildings just because they're old, or so we hope. But the School Board's decision to raze the school is understandable, too. The critical factor here is cost, coupled with an inability to pinpoint a use for the building. Emerson is historic, no question. For nearly 70 years it housed high school, junior high and grade school classes. But the estimated cost of making it safe, bringing it up to code and remodeling it for future usage is overwhelming, well up in seven figures. That's daunting in this time of tight public budgets. Sorry to say, we've demolished more historic and more architecturally imposing buildings than Emerson. One was a school that stood a little to the east on the same grounds as Emerson. It was built in 1892, looked like a castle and was the city's high school and then the vocational school until the Mid-State Technical College building was constructed in 1961. It survives only in photographs. Other mourned victims of the wrecker's ball were the old post office, the old public library, the old courthouse and the Dunegan house which stood on today's post office property. Old Main at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point survived only because of the efforts of people like Bill Bablitch, John Anderson, Dick Toser and Lee Dreyfus. The fact that we've torn down other historic and attractive buildings is no excuse for doing the same to Emerson, but we need a rationale to save it, along with the money. The School Board has left a small escape clause - if the funds and a purpose for saving the building can be found by March, it'll survive. But most likely it will go. And if it does go the community will have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The building would disappear, but we'd still have a historic and useful piece of property. When again would we have a solid block of open land available in the middle of town? What a great urban park it would make, helping to keep a good neighborhood healthy. --George Rogers