Winamac’s abandoned grain elevator will soon be replaced with a splash pad, thanks to a local family. Plans for the Owen Abbott Memorial Splash Pad were unveiled during Monday’s Winamac Town Council meeting.
Abbott was a Winamac Middle School student who was killed in a school bus accident in Marshall County in 2018. Now, his family is honoring his memory by donating a 70-by-50-foot splash pad to the town.
Owen’s mom Britni Fritz says it’s a way to give back to the community. “The community was so supportive and helped us after the accident,” she explains, “and this is kind of our way to say ‘thank you’ because there’s no amount of anything that could say ‘thank you’ or to repay them back.”
Meanwhile, the Town of Winamac will install restrooms, benches, sidewalks, parking spaces, and other landscaping features, according to Town Manager Brad Zellers. He says he’s still working on lining up a funding source for the town’s portion of the work.
The splash pad will be located along the Winamac Parkway, west of Logan Street, between Adams and Jefferson streets.
The town has been working to purchase and redevelop the property for some time. During last week’s Winamac Park Board meeting, Board President Chris Schramm noted that it took a lot of work for plans to start coming together. “A lot of people didn’t realize all the work that Representative Doug Gutwein did and [Town Attorney] Justin [Schramm] did, making a bunch of phone calls for the property that we acquired, the old elevator property,” Schramm said. “They’re cleaning it out, and Brad did a bunch of phone calls with that. It took a long time for that.”
Going forward, Zellers hopes demolition of the elevator will be able to start in the next couple weeks. Fritz, meanwhile, says she’s still finalizing a design for the water features. “I want it to be sports-themed, mainly baseball,” Fritz said. “He did baseball and football.”
Town officials hope to have the splash pad ready this spring.
