Acosta's branching out to bigger space in Batavia
Referring to a new development for her consignment store, Chris Acosta said, "This is going to be huge." She is correct on many levels.
When the owner of Acosta's Consignment in St. Charles moves the furniture and other items inside of her 1920 W. Main St. location to the former Hubbard's Ethan Allen Gallery building in Batavia, she'll be moving into a 14,000-square-foot site divided into 47 rooms. That's huge.
"We are very excited about this and it will be the largest upscale furniture consignment store in Illinois," Acosta said of the upcoming move. That's huge.
Acosta will continue to operate two stores, keeping her east side St. Charles location at 116 E. Main St. in addition to renting the new Batavia site, for which she is planning an Aug. 16 grand opening. That's huge.
The room setup at the Ethan Allen site will be a welcome change, Acosta said. "Being furniture consignment, it makes a lot of sense for us to have that division of space so we can have a dining room displayed currently and a bedroom and a living room," she said. "We can have all of these rooms displayed the way we want as opposed to being limited.
"Basically, right now (in the St. Charles locations), we have furniture pieces that create the 'walls' and division of space," Acosta added.
The Batavia site, at 16 N. Batavia Ave., has all of the ingredients Acosta was seeking. "The parking is easy to get in and out of, and traffic going past the building is great," Acosta said.
Other than redoing the foyer and painting a couple of rooms, Acosta said the building doesn't need any significant work before moving in her furniture and other items.
"We will have boutique rooms where we have handbags and purses, and we will have a room for candles, and all of that will develop more the longer we are there," she said.
It's the hardware: The hardware on the set of a TV show never gets the attention usually adorned on the show's stars.
But a Batavia business was beaming earlier this month at the thought of its hardware being part of the "Buddy's Bakery Rescue" series on TLC.
Producers of the show chose Doran Scales for its stainless steel, digital bakery scales. Those scales appeared in a July 1 episode in which a struggling bakery's mechanical scale was being replaced with a new digital scale from Doran.
Bring some Kleenex: Fox Valley Wildlife Center, near the entrance to the Elburn Forest Preserve, says it has received more than 1,500 animals, mostly babies, since the first of the year.
The center is hoping people can donate boxes of unscented Kleenex and grapes, melon, zucchini, squash and greens. Those who can supply those items are asked to drop them off between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. any day.
Hear his story: If you haven't had a chance to listen to Mike Dixon's interesting presentation about his experiences during a three-year stint in the Peace Corps in Ukraine, he'll be speaking at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the Carnegie Community Room at the St. Charles Public Library.
Dixon has mostly been hitting the service club circuit with his story since he got back from Ukraine earlier this year when the unrest in that country made it too dangerous for him to stay.
You feel bad that the St. Charles architect had to leave that country. You can tell that he loved the place and its people and was doing so much good work there in helping them revive historic structures and take on community projects.
Share your skills: Think you possess certain skills that others might be interested in hearing about? Batavia Public Library hopes the answer is "yes."
The library is asking people to visit its website and get involved in the "How-To Community" demonstration series. Those interested in the series have to inform the library about what they would like to learn, in addition to revealing a talent or skill they feel they could teach to others.
Ultimately, the library wants residents to share expertise with each other in a series of presentations at the library, whether it has to do with fashion, home repairs or making your way around new technology.
Motown memories: Access to quality musicals and plays in local theaters is definitely one of the bright spots about living in the Tri-Cities. But the other great thing is that we aren't far from Chicago either when a great show beckons.
That's why "My Girl" by the Temptations and "The Love You Save" by the Jackson 5 was stuck in my head a good part of this week. Apparently, there wasn't room in my brain for the many other great tunes in this show to lock into place.
A trip down to see "Motown" at the Oriental Theatre last weekend resulted in this fabulous trip down memory lane.
Relieving the headaches: Readers had some interesting thoughts on the St. Charles "headaches" that were mentioned a couple of weeks ago.
I'll share those thoughts next week.
For those who may have missed it, the points of pain in St. Charles were the ongoing rehab project at the home of Cliff McIlvaine, the delay in getting work underway at The Quad/Charlestowne Mall, and the up-in-the-air status of the First Street redevelopment project.
dheun@sbcglobal.net