Courier Press

River Ridge High School will once again be a collection point for Operation Santa Claus in the River Ridge area. Operation Santa Claus is sponsored by the West Grant Lions Club to help those families in need have a Merry Christmas. The club serves the Bagley, Bloomington, Glen Haven, Mt. Hope and Patch Grove areas.

If you have any food items (especially canned goods), please bring them to the River Ridge High School office. The Lions Club cannot distribute home canned foods or home baked items. Please do not donate any clothing other than new stocking caps, gloves and mittens. The Lions Club cannot distribute used clothing.

Monetary donations may be dropped off at the school or mailed to the West Grant Lions Club, P.O. Box 77, Patch Grove, WI 53817. The deadline for making donations is Friday, Dec. 4.

The holidays are just around the corner. The Prairie du Chien Jaycees elves are once again busy making preparations for their annual Operation Santa program. Last season, the Jaycees assisted over 150 Crawford County families in need.

Operation Santa provides families with toys (or Chamber bucks) for each child and a toothbrush, blanket, hat, mittens, scarf and either a coat or some new clothing. Each family also receives fresh apples and oranges, butter and free coupons for bread, milk and a ham. These items are free to families in need and help make the holidays a little brighter for them.

Operation Santa is only possible because of the generous donations the Jaycees receive from the community. This year, all non-perishable food collected will go directly to the food pantry for the families to pick up there during their monthly distribution.

By Correne Martin

Prairie du Chien Downtown Revitalization Inc. dissolved in January of 2014. By October last year, a new entity, PdC Main Street, was conceived with a focus on re-establishing the efforts of economic recovery, historic preservation and promotion of downtown businesses. Since then, PdC Main Street has predominantly organized itself and worked to improve public esteem surrounding such a local main street program.

“We’ve spent the past year creating the organization, electing a board and officers, appointing committee chairs, finding volunteers and working on publicity,” PdC Main Street Chair Chris Mara stated. “All of that has taken time and effort. We’ve also spent the year trying to foster some good will and improve our worth in the eyes of the public. PDRI failed for a number of reasons we’ve come to understand, but we’ve tried to move forward.”

An open house is being held at Bluff Haven Assisted Living, 720 S. Fremont St., in Prairie du Chien on Wednesday, Nov. 4 from 3 to 7 p.m. The community is invited to celebrate this $1.6 million expansion project, which will include tours of this state-of the-art 14-bed addition.

There will be an apple pie and pumpkin pie bar social with ice cream. There will also be prize drawings for homemade pies made by the Bistro.

A ribbon cutting ceremony will be held at 5 p.m.

According to Alesha Erdenberger, vice president of operations, the project will expand needed resident capacity of the assisted living community and will help serve the needs of this community. The community has been requesting this type of expanded healthcare services, and we are excited to provide this new space.