1410 WIZM

It's been a long time coming. A little longer than originally thought, actually. The Grand River Station Transit Center in downtown La Crosse. A grand opening for the center this week. About ten months after it was supposed to be open.   City Public Works director Dale Hexom says original plans needed additional details worked out before contractors could even begin the project, which led to some delays.   But complications with financing also pushed the completion of the transit center back.   Hexom says the building will come in close to its original 23 million dollar budget. But, with bills for the project still coming in, at this point he's not sure how close.

Big bulldozers and giant, gravel-hauling trucks aren't hurrying to Bliss Road in La Crosse.  Not quite yet. First, a firm has been contracted to drill for soil samples at the site of the latest washout of the road that climbs from the city floor to the top of Grandad Bluff. The city's Public Works department says the soil cores are needed to evaluate the quality of what's underneath the section of road at the washout. And that has to happen prior to any repair getting started. Bliss washed out after a heavy rain just over a week ago. It remains closed and will likely be that way for at least a few more weeks.

La Crosse police scored a two-fer over the week-end at a house on the city's far southside.

 

Late Sunday night, they busted a 26 year-old guy outside the house on Quail drive after he apparently threatened his wife with a Remington 870 12 guage. But it was after cops went into the home that they found all the agricultural fun the guy's brother, 20 year-old Kallen Faas has been having. They found marijuana plants in a makeshift grow cabinet made out of an old fridge. They found hallucinogenic mushrooms growing in rice. They found fertilizer and needles and grow lights and a book on growing pot along with dried pot and 'shrooms. All of it, insists Faas, for his own personal use. Police have arrested him for dealing.

Neighbors on the northside of La Crosse should get an attaboy from police. It was calls about suspicious activity at a house on Harvey street on the northside that brought out investigators. A look through the garbage gave police all they needed to justify a search of the home of Justin Betz and Heather Fitzgerald. Inside, all kinds of drugs. And the couple's two little children. The 28 year-old Betz has an extensive criminal background and has just recently gotten out of the slammer . Now, he and Fitzgerald have been busted for possession.