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Main Street migration 8 downtown businesses have closed in 2019 SCOTT GIRARD Unified Newspaper Group
Warm memories
Photo by Kimberly Wethal
Donovan Erhardt plays at the splash pad at Nordic Ridge on Monday, June 17, in the mid-70 degree weather. He and his family will be moving to Florida soon, so he was spending one of his final days in Stoughton at a place he loved, his mother said.
Stoughton Area School District
Dress code changes, awards top recent school year District-wide updates to the dress code were some of the most noticeable changes to the Stoughton Area School District’s operations in 2018-19. In addition to generally loosening rules for clothes, hatwear and footwear and clarifying what sort of content on clothes is objectionable, the district also made schedule changes to the high school schedule and continued to evolve and update its security training
and procedures. The district continued to expand its infrastructure for science, technology, engineering, arts and math and continued its Innovation Grants program Stoughton High School received some awards and honors, one teacher won a Kohl Fellowship and another published a book. The midyear change to the dress code was the most sweeping of the changes, adding more permissible
of staff and students who reviewed codes and conducted research to update the apparel section of the student handbook. Some of the changes included the types of clothing and footwear. The district began allowDress code revisions ing students to wear “slipChanges to the dress pers” to school provided code took effect in Janu- they are “both safe and ary for all K-12 students, non-destructive to school and it was the result of Turn to 2018-19/Page 12 work done by a committee
Stoughton’s Main Street is less crowded these days, with eight businesses that had been housed there closing in the first half of 2019. Another business not on Main Street – Malabar Coffee at the Stoughton Wellness and Athletic Center – also shut its doors this year. Local leaders say they are not concerned, that businesses come and go but the downtown remains active. The exits have left a few storefronts vacant, some with signs explaining the closure and thanking longtime customers. “We will miss downt ow n S t o u g h t o n , y o u r faces, and all the magic we felt being a small business,” reads a letter on the door at Stori Anne Co. “Thank you so much for allowing us to have our dream over these past seven years. It has been amazing, and no piece of paper could ever truly express our gratitude.” The reasons vary: The owner of Mary’s Fine Antiques at 193 W. Main St., for example, was moving to New England to be closer to family, according to a Facebook post.
Closures • Paco’s Tacos, 135 W. Main St. • Stori Anne Co., 117 W. Main St. • Mary’s Fine Antiques, 193 W. Main St. • Giggles, 144 E. Main St. • Prize Impressions, 174 E. Main St. • Yahara Co-Op, 229 E. Main St. • Malabar Coffee, SWAC • Firehouse Tattoo, 183 W. Main St. • The Lilystone, 401 S. Fifth St. Prize Impressions and The Lilystone, meanwhile, both moved their catalogs online, saving money on rent costs. And Paco’s Tacos had been working on a new lease with the landlord, at first limiting his hours but eventually fully closing its 135 W. Main St. restaurant. Giggles and Firehouse Tattoo also closed their Main Street storefronts this year. The former Firehouse Tattoo building at 183 W. Main St. already
Turn to Businesses/Page 2
clothing but specifically prohibiting apparel that depicts hate speech targeting groups based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, religious affiliation or any other protected groups.
Photo by Amber Levenhagen
Stori Anne is one of the downtown businesses that closed this year.
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