Recently it was proposed that Belleville consider bringing back the electric streetcars to dowtown Belleville as part of a community redevelopment.

This has been done in other cities such as Tampa, Fla.; Little Rock, Ark.; Charlotte, N.C.; Kenosha,Wisc., and Dallas where they have been a great draw for tourist and sightseers. So successful have these been thatseveral operations are being expanded.

Something much like this is being done in the Delmar Loop neighborhood in St. Louis right now.

Belleville once had two streetcar lines that linked it to St.Louis, one on West Main and the other through the Signal Hill neighborhood, part of which is now being developed as a green space corridor.

What might the Belleville trolley look like? Come and see a 90-year-old streetcar that once ran in Athens, Greece, and that starred in the movie "Never on Sunday," undergoing restoration at the Cedar Ridge Nursing Home in Lebanon.

Mark Godwin

Lebanon