Blue Goose R.I.P.

(editorial by the Outlook’s Dave Schmidt)

Well the “Blue Goose” is gone. I must give the present City of Celina administration a round of applause. It only took them 40 years to finally get it down, but at least they finally made it happen. Maybe the used scrap metal was sent down to Mexico and they are now using it to make Huffy bicycles, but at least the “Blue Goose” is gone. Hey we even had someone pay to take it down, wow a moneymaker! But how much did this symbol of bad judgment cost the city over the past 40 years? I do know that no one past or present in city government would like to find out and disclose that cost for a power plant that never ever produced electric. The “Blue Goose” was built using used generators and parts from an old plant in Tennessee, a plant that probably did not work as well. I’m surprised that Mike Wallace from “60 Minutes” never did a segment on this and all of the “screw-ups” made during the “Blue Goose” years. But the first question has to be why did it take almost 40 years to tear down an eyesore? The first thing you would see entering Celina from the south was the big old ugly “Blue Goose”. To make matters worse you can also smell the city’s sludge lagoons entering from the south, another great choice made by the city. Are the lagoons still there? Something doesn’t smell right!

How many mayors and safety-service directors said that this is a priority to tear down the “Blue Goose” during the past 40 years, only to have to say it wasn’t feasible or have some council member question there right to do it. How much upkeep did it take to run a power plant that would not produce power? I do know that a couple of the last original employees of the “Blue Goose” had a great workshop in the basement where they would fix lawnmowers or work on antiques or keep old junk they would find during Celina’s Annual Clean-Up. It was a great place to hide for Celina City employees from the bosses, not that I ever did that as a meter reader. It was a great storage building, you named it the city stored it there. The elevator for the seven-story building would work sometimes, if you were lucky. The roof was a great place to watch fireworks during Lake Festival, so the “Blue Goose” did have some good points. I do remember one of my fellow city workers calling back to the office on the radio one day that he was down at the “Blue Goose”. Whoops that was the wrong thing to do, boss calls him into the office, “we call it the power plant”.

My dad at one time ran for the Mayor of Celina, his thoughts, “Put an orange stripe around it and turn it into a Howard Johnson’s”. I thought we could have rented it out to Hollywood for chase scenes up and down the stairs and we could have made some fast cash. I can see Jack Bauer catching a spy as I write this. I remember there was even talks over the years about turning it into a mini-mall with a restaurant, etc. There were some other options that I would not be able to print the “four letter” words that were used as adjectives. For many years DP&L and AMP-Ohio told us, hey that is a valuable building for peak-shaving electric during extreme power usage in the hot summer months and the cold winter months, but first let’s do a study to evaluate this. How many reports do you think were done over the years on the “Blue Goose”? I think several consultants retired by just doing reports on the “Blue Goose”. I still think the coal shoot on the north side would have made a great roller coast ride.

Isn’t it quite ironic that the new water treatment plant will be built on the site of the “Blue Goose”, possibly had the “Blue Goose” not been built there may have been some funds to keep the water plant and lines updated and fixed. The cost to operate the “Blue Goose”, legal proceedings and other financial issues caused other parts of city government to suffer. As a meter reader we once had a car with tires that were quite bare, we were told no money to buy new ones that was because of the “Blue Goose”. The “Blue Goose” has had a negative effect on Celina and will always be remembered as the “mistake by the lake” or is that the Browns. So I guess taking down one mistake and placing another mistake on the site makes sense.

I do have a suggestion, let’s paint the new boardwalk blue to remind us of how things used to be and probably will remain in the future. The more things change the more they stay the same…digging wells in the wrong place, buying buildings you don’t require or need, building a boardwalk that the citizens didn’t want via a vote.

So good-by “Blue Goose” we will all miss you and never forget what you meant to the City of Celina.

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