The design of Cape Charles Central Park included a gazebo to anchor the east end, and a piazza with a fountain to anchor the west end. The fountain, however, has been dry for most of its existence. To be fair, water did flow from it once–for about six minutes, nine years ago.
The Mirror contacted Town Manager Hozey to see just what’s up with the fountain, which could and should be a beautiful asset to the town.
We currently have an active project in play to get the Central Park fountain working again. But it involves a bit of a re-design. The current design has been a maintenance nightmare; constant leaks and clogs. So the re-design will remove the base area of the fountain and create a concrete pad to form a type of splash and play area for kids under the main part of the fountain. Water would then flow into trenches and into an underground tank where it would be pumped back up to the top of the fountain again. The Town and CCP have coordinated on this redesign.
The problem is that in a year following COVID shutdowns, everything seems to be more expensive and/or on backorder. This was the case with the underground tank needed to rebuild the fountain. We had initially hoped to get this work done before the end of this summer, but we are still experiencing delays. Bottom-line, as soon as we can get the logistics to cooperate, we’ll start work on getting a new functioning fountain in Central Park again. — Town Manager, John Hozey
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What a wonderful idea!
The current design has been a maintenance nightmare; constant leaks and clogs?
What on earth kind of design was that?
Sounds incompetent to me, anyway.
How much did that faulty design cost the taxpayers?
How much will it cost them to do this re-design?
And based on the first incompetent design, how do the taxpayers know they won’t b ripped off a second time with another maintenance nightmare?
Has anyone dug a bit deeper into how that first incompetent design made it through the approval process?