Big spending at the visitor bureau? The charge was made 28 years ago

In 1990, a newspaper report said the La Crosse Area Convention and Visitor Bureau had spent $3 million in tax money, without actually being an elected government body. Receipts and bills for the CVB were missing, and so were the minutes of many of their board meetings. Ten years’ worth of minutes were unaccounted for.

Festival Foods made its debut in the summer of 1990, with the Skogen family opening the first Festival at Crossing Meadows in Onalaska. The shopping center near Exit 4 had just been built, and for several years it was the home of the first Wal-Mart store in the immediate La Crosse market.

Pat Sajak had a late night talk show on CBS for a little over a year. It ended in the spring of 1990, and the network didn’t hire David Letterman until three years later. Sajak’s show could be seen on WKBT, where Bill Hoel and Anne Paape were reunited as a local news anchor team. The two had been co-anchors on WXOW for five years, until Hoel switched to Channel 8, and Paape followed a short time later…in 1990, 28 years ago, yesterday in La Crosse.