The Winamac Park Board may soon have a firmer cost estimate for a proposed lighting feature for the Town Park’s Swinging Bridge. “Apparently, someone was up with Mr. [Greg] Henry, came up and saw him and have made another appointment. But they did some measurements on the bridge, as far as the lighting,” Park Board President Courtney Poor told the rest of the board last week. “And so he hopes to have some of that information, hopefully, maybe for the January meeting, as far as just estimates from that company. I had requested they have it by the 15th of January, I think.”
For the past several months, the park board’s been discussing the idea of adding a lighting feature in time for the bridge’s centennial in 2023. But there’s some other work that still has to be done before then, such as painting the bridge. “If you’re going to do it properly, in my opinion, I think you probably should do a sandblast and then repaint, and it’s going to be expensive,” Poor added. “But I will tell you this. I believe with all my heart that if you tell the public, ‘We want to do this for this bridge and we need to do it and we need some money,’ I think people would really come through for that.”
Town manager and park board member Brad Zellers noted that the bridge still hasn’t been checked for lead paint.
In other business last week, board member Jon Chapman suggested working with Don Darda of the Winamac Tree Committee to remove undesirable smaller trees along the riverbank over the winter.
