Repairs to the Bass Lake Beach gate house may be complete this spring. It was seriously damaged more than two years ago, when a pickup truck reportedly crashed into it. But during last month’s Starke County Park Board meeting, Board Member Butch Gerstandt reported that parts of the building still weren’t painted, and the wood was falling apart.
In an update to the park board Tuesday, the facility’s manager Larry Clarich said that finding volunteers has been harder than he expected, but some progress has been made. “That building was knocked off its axis, and the sill plate on the one side was completely rotted,” he said. “That has been replaced. Some of the studs were rotted. Those were repaired, and the siding’s been put up around every part of it that had gotten moved from the incident, when it got hit.”
He said he still plans to do the rest of the building, although he hasn’t gotten to it yet. “I’m sure there’s probably rot on the side where the bricks are,” Clarich said. “The bricks are not going to go back up because there’s just not enough money in there, and I think the money that we got from the insurance company would be better put into removing the bricks, putting new windows and a new door in there.”
Clarich said the $2,500 insurance check the county received hasn’t been touched yet, and that he wouldn’t seek to be reimbursed until the work was complete.
