Can a lemonade stand can help save a Green Bay landmark?

A Green Bay landmark is in serious need of repair but its owner can’t afford the work. So the school district is holding a Fourth of July lemonade sale.

A replica of an early Wisconsin log cabin sits on the grounds of the Fort Howard Elementary School near downtown. The cabin was build in the mid-seventies, but has often been mistaken for the real thing.

That may be partly due to the fact that it’s crumbling. Longtime teacher Chuck Hatfield coordinated the original building project using student labor. He now lives in La Crosse and wasn’t sure if people in Green Bay wanted to keep the cabin…until he heard from staff and students at Fort Howard Elementary. “Many people used it as an automatic sign post that told you when you’re one block from Broadway,” he says. “So when Fort Howard stepped forward and said we really want this that’s when myself and a whole bunch of kids started the Facebook page.”

The Green Bay Area School District says it will cost thirty thousand dollars to restore it, and set up an endowment fund.

District spokeswoman Amanda Brooker says the work isn’t a financial priority in a time of tight budgets. “We’ve been cutting at least six million dollars a year from our budget and since this does not directly affect students’ education needs we’re looking for large corporate as well as small private donations,” she says. “The cabin is a landmark in downtown Green Bay, people are very emotionally attached to it. So we feel the need that it’s important to keep it.”

The sale is timed to coincide with Green Bay’s daylong Fourth of July festival and fireworks display which draws upwards of one hundred thousand visitors.