Urbana City Council Rejects Urbanastand Art Proposal

It was to be an array of newspaper vending boxes that would also be a work of art. But the Urbana City Council decided Tuesday night to go with just the vending boxes.

Local artist Frederic Beaugeard's "Urbanastand" would have gone up outside the Champaign County Courthouse, combining newspaper vending boxes with displays of historic headlines from old Champaign-Urbana newspapers, . The project would have cost the city of Urbana more than 60-thousand dollars. Mayor Laurel Prussing persuaded the city council to go with something plainer for about 4-thousand dollars.

"We're just going to buy a commercially available newsstand," says Prussing, "which was going to be the centerpiece of the artwork anyway.and so we'll have a nice looking place for people to buy newspapers. Right now there's kind of a jumble of little news dispensers that are falling over each other and falling down."

Alderman Charlie Smyth proposed last month that private donations could pay for most of the cost of Urbanastand. On Tuesday night, he said that was still possible, but only if someone steps in soon to either pay for the project, or organize a fundraising drive.

Meanwhile, the Urbana City Council will now use 9-thousand dollars from money budgeted for Urbanastand to help erect a sculpture near the city building that's been planned for the last 20 years. The city's contribution will help match private donations for John David Mooney's steel sculpture, which incorporates LED lighting. The city's contribution will help match private donations.