Upgrades may soon be coming to the Winamac Town Park Pavilion. The structure dates back to the 19th Century, and now it’s in need of some repairs.
Some specific ideas were discussed during last week’s Winamac Park Board meeting. Board member Brad Zellers suggested updating the outside of the pavilion while preserving its historic interior. “I guess my thought would be on that thing, I hate to say this [but] put steel on the outside, put white siding, leave the inside, and the inside will last forever,” he said. “From a distance, it’s not going to look any different than it does right now. It’s going to have tin on it.”
Park Manager Dave DeLorenzo told the board that he hadn’t yet gotten any estimates on potential repair work. Park Board President Courtney Poor suggested that removing some of the trees surrounding the pavilion might also help improve the site. “They’ve grown to a point now where you basically can’t see the building very well,” he said. “And I think that going with a different type of landscaping with possibly the removal of those and the replacement with something else that is more manageable would make sense, and I think it would eliminate some of the problems of the wicking effect of moisture that has caused some of the problems in that building itself.”
The issue with that idea is that the landscaping includes memorial trees. The park board decided to contact relatives before proceeding with the replacement of the landscaping.
Additionally, visitors to Veteran’s Memorial Park may soon have a place to sit. Poor says the American Legion and the VFW have both agreed to donate benches, “They would like to have one bench, basically, for the Legion, one bench for the VFW, and one bench for the auxiliary of both organizations, because their point is this: the families of the soldiers, sailors, the ones that are left behind, make sacrifices too.”
However, board members voted to limit the number of benches at Veteran’s Memorial Park to two, due to space limitations. Poor suggested that the American Legion and VFW work together to decide on a design for the benches, with the park board making the final decision.
