Faith, Dreams, Truth, & Doing the Right Thing

In a particularly prescient moment,
Scott bought a book on construction before
we moved from Brooklyn to Dubuque:
"Working Alone" by John Carroll

Over a year ago, Scott and I were chatting in the sun on our now-replaced driftwood stoop, and he asked me, "What was your dream?" Without hesitation, I turned to him and said, "My dream was to marry you. And I got that." After his usual, "Oh, sweetie...," he clarified, "Actually, I mean here, in Dubuque. What was your dream here?" My reply, "My dream was to save this building." Today, it is pretty clear that Scott and I have saved a culturally and historically significant building from the wrecking ball, in the heart of Downtown Dubuque, pretty much all by ourselves.  

Scott and I have now fulfilled our primary vision in Dubuque. We have also fulfilled the terms of the grants mentioned in Dominic Velando's unpublished 2016 Q&A with us below, including the $75K competitive matching grant from the State of Iowa's Economic Development Authority for Main Street Iowa's Challenge Grant X and a total of almost $19K in matching grants from the City of Dubuque. One day, perhaps we'll have the funding for the facade work our building deserves. 

Restoring water and sewer service to our building, April, 2015.
Our brilliant plumber often works alone also. This excavation
wound up happening during our Architecture Days Tour
with Dubuque Main Street. Some might have though the timing
was horrible, but not us. We got to state to our tour group,
"Thank you for being here. We know both possible entrances are
basically blocked, but today was when the excavator was available
and they surprised us with two crews. So, this gives an idea of
what it really takes to rehabilitate a historic structure."

Achieving our shared dream in Dubuque has been unbelievably challenging for both of us. Plus, there are moments that confirm we are not crazy, like this one: It's always interesting when a representative from a state-wide heritage organization, someone who works with places just like ours, comes for a site visit in 2016, observes that we've installed an ADA platform lift, so you tell her you could barely afford it, how much it cost, and that it had to happen for code compliance, that you needed it to open the 2nd floor to the public, and she sing-songs, "Oh! People get tax abatement for that!" and you get to tell her, "Not us. We've asked and been denied," and then, this seasoned and quite brilliant professional, pauses, gets wide-eyed, reaches out and touches your hand, looks you dead in the eye, and quietly and calmly encourages you with, "You are doing the right thing here. You keep on."

The $35K screwdriver which came with a free platform lift,
Amazingly, the lift does get more use than this screwdriver.
We're happy that all people can be on Smokestack's 2nd level.

Doing the right thing is rarely easy. Sometimes people get nice awards, money, praise, and recognition for doing the right thing, for doing their best, for doing what we as people are supposed to do. Yet, doing the right thing brings a deeper satisfaction and that is the true reward that one can only give to oneself. Hello, again, Brooklyn Friends School and Quakerism, you're not the only place I got that idea, but you are significant to its development in my being and belief system.

This section of Dominic's Q&A from 2016 touches on some lesser-known and more difficult aspects of Scott's and my life in Dubuque.

Dominic Velando
People who know you and frequent your business know that you’re engaged in a challenging struggle to realize these projects. What exactly do you need to achieve your goals?


Scott & Susan
Continued support and understanding from the community as we learn, grow, and continue our path of allowing this project to unfold as it must. We are human and imperfect. They have already sustained us through 2.5 years of intense hardship, disappointments and joys, appearing to offer encouragement when we have needed them most. We are living other people’s fantasies: we know people dream of doing what we are doing, moving to a place knowing nobody, daring to do something incredibly bold, and they rarely take such a plunge.

Scott, through the concrete dust, working alone.

The difficult answer, of course, is money. People incorrectly assume we are wealthy. In fact, we have now depleted everything we once had, despite trying to save money by doing much of the work by ourselves and repurposing whatever possible (well, as much as allowed by the City of Dubuque in both cases). The financial and tax incentives that seem readily available to larger developments and businesses, which were touted to us early on, were, in the end, not available to us for myriad reasons, including difficult timing, being deemed historically insignificant, being marginalized, minimized, misinformed, uninformed even when asking, and being unconnected and new to the area. Still, we are incredibly grateful to the City of Dubuque for allowing us a $10K matching design grant, a partial disbursement of a $5K matching ADA grant, and we hope to fulfill and receive a $2.5K matching community project grant and a rain garden grant of $2K for our planned pocket park behind Smokestack. We also hope to fulfill the terms of the $75K matching Main Street Iowa grant from the Iowa Economic Development Authority that will help us open our second floor and rooftops. 

Exhausted after another day, early into our project
Banjo on his knee...

These matching grants, totaling a little less than $100K from state and city, are the extent of meaningful “help” for this project to date and it all goes back into the building immediately. So many people smile as they tell us that “The City must be helping you with this” and they are stunned by our reality, very often saddened. As with most things, people can and will say what they want, but we intuit what is really said and it is often confirmed later. We further know that others have still harder experiences in this world, so if our experience can help just one person, that has to be enough for us.

It began with a raft ride...
Yes, I was blonde then and we did not plan to match.

It has been said that “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” We seem to still be in the ridicule and violent opposition phases, which seems also to encompass being ignored, silenced, and treated inequitably. A woman [Arlene Symons] told Susan many years ago of her path to achieving a near-impossible vision that was the subject of an Oscar and Emmy winning short documentary [Close Harmony], of not understanding why others, particularly those in power, were not getting on board, and her mentor's answer has rung in Susan’s ears daily since we moved to Dubuque, this woman’s mentor simply stated, “When you are a visionary, you are alone. They come later.”

Our struggle in Dubuque is actually a faith journey. Faith in people, in community, in Dubuque, in Iowa, in this property, in this building, in our vision, in ourselves, in one another, in heeding that still, small voice that told us to leave good lives in NYC and move to Dubuque alone, in letting it unfold naturally, and do this.

Preview of the next Q&A:  
How else would you describe how [Smokestack's] identity has developed? 
And Scott quotes Nabokov - why wouldn't he?

Smokestack Q&A 1, Smokestack Q&A 2, Smokestack Q&A 3