Upgrades at the Bass Lake Beach continue to move ahead. During Tuesday’s Starke County Park Board meeting, it was reported that the glacial stone has been installed, with some help from the Starke County Highway Department. The goal is to protect the facility from incoming waves and prevent future erosion.
Now that that’s done, the next step is to deliver sand to replenish the beach. Part of the cost of the sand and stone was covered by a $5,000 Community Support Grant from the Starke County Community Foundation.
The installation of the stone also means that the operators of the beach can now move ahead with repairs to the beach house patio, according to Assistant Manager Larry Clarich. The fill that’s supposed to support the structure had apparently washed away over the years, but Clarich says the new stone should stop that from happening now. “What we’ve been doing is we’ve been filling that with sand underneath,” he told the park board. “There’s a lot of water under there. It’s kind of self-compacting as it’s going down, so what we’re doing is we’re filling it, letting it compact, filling it. Once we get it up to level, I’ll take pictures of it before, but then I’m going to seal that top crack so that nothing else can get down in there. And it should be good to go for many, many years after that.”
In the meantime, Clarich says the patio does not pose a safety hazard. “I guarantee you that patio is definitely structurally safe because they were driving their equipment back there,” he said.
He told the park board that he plans to fix the patio’s railing in the next few weeks, as well. “There’s a couple spots where they busted out the concrete,” he explained, “so they’re wobbly down at the bottom in a couple of spots, and they need to be fixed.”
Clarich also asked county officials to consider installing four signs warning beach-goers to stay off of the new glacial stone.
