Dalton RobertsOut of the Blue Restaurant in Brainerd is closing, and my family is mourning as though we were losing one of our own.
My first contact with Out of the Blue was when they successfully outbid everyone to run the deli at the Fishing Center at the Tennessee Riverpark. All this gave me a profound admiration for owner, Peggy Roselle.
Moreover, in making my plea in a recent column for turning Brainerd into an arts district with a lot of speciality shops, this one certainly fit beautifully into that picture. Add the magic of a few good entertainment venues, and I can see this rainbow bubble that has always hung over Brainerd drop to the ground and become a reality.
But such realities take vision.
Someone recently asked me why downtown development had been such a success in Chattanooga. I said there were three main reasons: One is the power of an overwhelmingly single project like the Tennessee Aquarium; two is local businessmen seeing that downtown had become a good investment; and three is city and county government’s unflinching support for the projects and for funding them.