Article: Dolled up: Refurbished town lost its soul, critics complain

AURORA, N.Y. - Early settlers called Aurora the village of constant dawn, and it evokes that feeling today - historic lakeside mansions dusted in a kind of timeless glow, an old-world red-brick inn, ivy-clad buildings rising from the lawns of Wells College.

Even the village market with its perfectly perched baskets of ripe vegetables seems almost too good to be true.

For some who live here, it is.

"How polished we are now, how shiny," says village historian Sheila Edmunds. "But at what cost?"

The village of 700, listed on the National Registrar of Historic Places, was anything but shiny six years ago. Paint peeled off old mansions, the inn struggled to stay open and the college struggled ...

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