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Show AN EDITION OF T IX E r L0TC-018 1 AT I ON 1 v 00 G41 24-1501 YOUR TOWN, YOUR NEIGHBORS, YOUR NEWSPAPER THURSDAY. MARCH 17. 2005 50 CENTS Welcome to your new Orem Geneva Times. Inside you'll find familiar fresh features that include: city news Town Hall (2); Schools (4); Sports & Rec. (6); and local profiles on Business (5). Plus .. PEOPIiEETC. WEDDINGS, ANNIVERSARIES AND MISSIONARIES Veterans Remember: firsthand accounts of life during war Plus: obituaries, police beat, comics akeside Spoils Pair entering Erika Nelson NORTH COUNTY STAFF On 400 South, just beyond Geneva Road lies an enormous stretch of carefully tended grass, neatly fenced off for its various uses and dotted by obviously ob-viously young trees. In the nippy days of this early spring season the park's five baseball diamonds and eight full-size soccer fields are usually usu-ally empty, but soon this scene will change. This large park, described as one of the crown jewel athletic fields in all of Utah County by Jerry Ortiz, Orem's director of recreation, will be home to hosts of local athletes as they battle with goals and fouls in their summer games. Orem's Lakeside Sports Park will see its third season of play this year, hosting the 3,000 child-strong youth soccer soc-cer league and over 100 teams worth of adult softball. The park is also home to the local girls accelerated fast pitch teams. Orem's teams have not always al-ways had such a unified home. Before Lakeside Sports Park was developed in the west side of the city, the leagues were spread throughout the city, playing wherever they could find a field or a diamond. The adult softball teams played in Windsor park and at Orem Elementary El-ementary school, while the soccer soc-cer league, which has had 3,000 players for about six years now, played in nearly every park and school in the city. "We were getting a lot of was demand," Ortiz said of the situation situ-ation before the park was built. "We couldn't keep up with the demands. We had very few, inadequate facilities." The park had been on the drawing board for many years before city leaders chose to appropriate ap-propriate the roughly $2 million out of the city's general fund, and when they did, the soccer league still had to struggle to essoin get the fields they needed built into the park. "We had to lobby just to get ttie fields," said Stephen Bowler, Bowl-er, president of Orem Youth Soccer. "It became more of a necessity rather than an extra. We were just bursting at the seams." Bowler said the continuous use See SPORTS PARK, Page 2 SCERA's Encore 'mm m ill yi i $ Air 1 b h h 7 0f' r hit r' V FRANK BOTTNorth County Staff The keeper of the gate of Emerald City, A.J. Nielson (right), talks to the Wizard of Oz visitors, Shawn Mortensen as the Scarecrow and Justin Kennington as the Tin Man, during a recent rehearsal at the SCERA Theater on Tuesday night. 'Wizard of Oz wraps up winter season; funding has provided for summer schedule Erika Nelson NORTH COUNTY STAFF Lately the theaters in the large SCERA building on State Street have housed more than movies. To the strains of piano music reminiscent of old-time melodramas, melo-dramas, accompanied by loud laughter and watched by a cast of munching actors, a group of adults and teenagers have been rehearsing the SCERA 's upcoming upcom-ing production of the "Wizard of Oz." The play, which will be a fun spin on an old classic, according to its director Mindy Young, is one of the final productions in the SCERA's Encore Season, a series of SCERA-sponsored plays and productions offered during the colder months, when the SCERA's outdoor theater is not in use. The Encore Season is just one of the many cultural offerings sponsored by Orem's major arts organization. Besides the plays, concerts and movies well known to the community, com-munity, the SCERA hosts many community outreach programs, including a children's theater, a youth chorus and a youth media lab, but these programs are costing cost-ing more than the theater can recover through ticket sales and participation fees. But thanks to the generosity of private donors, the SCERA has met its revenue goals for this year and is preparing to announce a summer season at the beginning of next month, according ac-cording to Adam Robertson, the SCERA's president. Also, the organization is already al-ready working on raising enough revenue to continue its programs into next year. The SCERA lost its major source of revenue with the advent ad-vent of the multiplex movie theater the-ater in Utah Valley. "We were the exclusive Disney outlet," Young said. "We didn't build 100 new complexes; we couldn't compete." In the past, the healthy ticket revenues from the Disney movies that ran for months on end at the SCERA subsidized the other arts programs, but as this revenue dropped off, the SCERA's major funding did as well. Ticket sales from the movie theaters still subsidize the other programs, but according to Robertson, Rob-ertson, the subsidy Ls a fraction of what the theaters brought to SCERA programs in the past. The SCERA Ls in the movie business busi-ness only to support the other arts programs, Robertson said, and if the theaters stopped bringing See SCERA, Page 2 Welcome to your new community newspaper elcome to your Orem Geneva f Times ' . We all need V J a little freshening freshen-ing up on occasion. To keep up with fashion, for example, we buy new clothes. To get around more efficiently, we trade in the old clunker for a new car. Newspapers are no different. We need to reinvent ourselves every few years to make sure we're serving readers the best we can. With this edition, the is proud to introduce a new and improved product, packed with more local news and loaded with more information in-formation about your friends and neighbors. You'll find it more organized and easier to read, with regular features tl.at will appear on the same pages every week. Starting in the first section you'll find important news of your community, with increased emphasis on local schools and business, as well as improved sports coverage that will include high school sports and community leagues. The second section, called People Etc., is a re-packaging of familiar content celebrations, weddings, missionaries and more, along with convenient local classified classi-fied advertising, all in one conve nient place. We are proud of our slogan Your town. Your neighbors. Your newspaper. and we work hard every week to bring you a quality product that Ls both interesting and informative. Please let as know what you think. You can write to me at 59 W. Main Street, American Ameri-can Fork, UT 84003; or e-mail mhadd(x:k'0' heraldextra.com. Marc Haddock North County Editor iff V Briefing American Fork HOMETOWN HISTORY - American Fork City is preparing prepar-ing to publish a book chronicling the past 60 years of the city's history. It is being written by Betty Spencer and is called "The Growing Years." It picks up after the George F. Shelley history of the city, "Early History of American Fork." City officials are preparing for the publication and have asked those interested in obtaining copies of the book to pre-order by calling American Fork administrative offices at 763-3000. Publication is anticipated in November. Cost estimates run $35 to $40. Spencer has spent years researching the stories in turning turn-ing them into readable versions. The book includes 500 photographs and a CD with approximately 2300 more photos. Lehi MODESTY ON THE RUNWAY - The cat calls and screams from the crowd sounded like something from a rough and rowdy audience at a girlie show. Except it wasn't. It was a modest wear fashion show. The spectators specta-tors were parents and teens and it was sponsored by the Lehi Region PTA at Lehi High School. "I thought it was really fun," said Jefferson Van Bloom, LHS student model. All of the clothes modeled were within school dress standard for casual, recreational and formal wear. One of the biggest stars for the evening was 10 year-old Skyler Munson, who dressed up as Napoleon Dynamite and played the part as he silently announced with a sign each business sponsoring a fashion sequence. Pleasant Grove LIBRARY ART - The Pleasant Grove library will be adorning two new paintings presented to the city's facility facil-ity by the Historical Preservation Commission on Tuesday. Tues-day. The three paintings created by local artist Louise Brimhall Hansen depict activities typical to early Pleasant Grove settlers. Two paintings will be given to the library and the other will be donated to historic blacksmith shop. J'- r -TU if ,TfK MATT SMITHNorth County Staff Pleasant Grove City Library Director April Harrison, at left, with Beth Olsen, center, and Mildred Sutch, at right, display pictures containing scenes of historic Pleasant drove.. Lindon BYE BYE BILLBOARD - People driving past Lindon City Park the past week may have noticed an absent billboard. bill-board. Four years of effort to get rid of the billboard paid off last week. The City Council approved purchasing the half acre north of Happy Trails (then Utah County Feed) May 15, 2001. The land had been used as part of city park for years, but was privately owned by R. L. Bird Co. One condition of the purchase was that the billboard be removed within 30 days. Reagan Outdoor Advertising, Advertis-ing, which was leasing land for the billboard, refused to remove it, claiming they had a right of first refusal when the land was sold, but that R. L. Bird sold the land without offering it for their refusal. The city sued R. L. Bird to remove the billboard, who in turn sued Reagan in 2002. The city told them to remove it by March 11 or the city would bulldoze the billboard and send Reagan a bill. -From staff reports ALPINE CREDIT UNION H . . . 191111 ME! 1UVITAT IOH TO iilESIBEOTS F UfftH GOOEITV ! You can now enjoy membership with ALPINE CREDIT UNION ONCUA! . ORFM AMFRICAN FORK I FHI f Hall fr AntuiU 225-0256 Mrmbrrxliip nwl BlipiMitfy Kqwjn j L VVWW.HAP.KTHEHERALD.COMNORTHCOUNTY CALL 375-5103 TO SUBSCRIBE -J COPY |