Funds OK’d for Service Monument at Veterans’ Green
SOUTH PORTLAND — Funding has been approved to finish a memorial
to local veterans at Mill Creek Park in South Portland, part of a major
overhaul of the site now under way.
Although work started a month behind schedule,
city officials said the $321,000 project should be done in time for Mill
Creek’s signature event, the 33rd annual Art in the Park show set
for Aug. 11.
“We had a slow start,” City Manager Jim Gailey
said this week. “There were some timing issues with getting the crews in there,
and getting the subcontractors at the concrete work. But the contractor has a
schedule to get the park ready for Concerts in Park, which start July 18, and
then Art in the Park.
“So, they know they need to get in and get out
in certain areas to get those two items going” said Gailey. ”We have the city’s
engineering forces and a monitor from Sebago Technics periodically popping up.
They know the timelines. They’re having weekly meetings. We feel confident it
will get done. They’ll pound it right out.”
However, Gailey noted that some elements at the
10-acre site, such as landscaping at the Service Monument at Veteran’s Green
and planting in the new community garden at the corner of Broadway and Ocean
Street, may be put off until September to make sure sections used for concerts
and the art show are ready to go when needed.
The park overhaul was first laid out in a
$10,000 master plan drafted in 2010 by Topsham landscape architect Regina
Leonard as a three-phased approach meant to beautify the park while heightening
its safety and usefulness for various events. The $500,000 first phase was
eventually pared back to $321,000 in available grant funding from Community Development
Block Grant sources.
Work included in phase one, being done largely
by Peters Construction, includes the installation
of a cast concrete retaining wall and footings, a stone dust path, earthwork
and site grading, along with plantings, seeding and mulch along the pond on the
gazebo site; as well as the reconstruction of Mill Stone Plaza “in its
entirety,” with installation of granite cobbles, sets, piers, pavers and radial
curbing, reconstruction of the pond retaining wall and creation of a new pond
outlet structure and the addition of new benches and lighting, along with
plantings and landscaping.
It
also includes general path work, including the installation 4-foot-by-6-inch-
stone dust paths surrounding the pond, with walkways extended toward Broadway
connected to the existing sidewalks, with relocation of existing park benches
and filling, grading and seeding over low areas of the park; and the creation
of the new garden at the corner of Broadway and Ocean Street with a
wrought-iron entrance arch, along with masonry walls and pillars.
The cuts initially meant putting off $70,000 in
landscaping work around the new monument, delivered last fall to a small park
section along Broadway, near Cottage Road.
The entire park was set aside shortly after World War II with the intent
to name it Veterans Park, according to monument committee member Stephen Popp.
Instead the Mill Creek name stuck, leaving the area around the new monument to
be rechristened as Veterans Green.
On Monday, the City Council agreed to honor
local veterans by taking $16,924 from undesignated surplus funds to finish the
monument. Although a stiff cut from the original proposal, committee member
Rosemarie West said the lesser work is actually an improvement.
“The original concept, with all of the granite
curbing around the walkways, was really beautiful,” she said on Monday. “But we
were the ones who said it’s really not practical in this day and age, because
of the cost and because it would make maintenance in the park much more complicated
for city workers.”
Cutting the curbing actually allowed Leonard to
widen the paths to six feet, said West, which will improve access for
handicapped visitors while also providing adequate space for color guard units
that may work ceremonies held from time to time at the site.
“To have the pathways connected to the rest of
the park and the Greenbelt Trail, and not just a small pathway into the middle,
is really important,” said West. “It’s an important part of this committee, and
our goal was to make it a place for all people to go to reflect.
That reflection sometimes takes a more robust
air, such as on July 3 when friends and family staged a flash mob to surprise
Dane Porter, a U.S. Army soldier on leave from Afghanistan.
Monument committee members say they are “pretty
much tapped out” on the $40,000 raised to create the monument (which was
matched by the city). Its focus going forward will be to raise funds for the
six black-granite benches to surround the site, at a cost of nearly $1,300 each.
“We don’t expect the taxpayers or city to be
paying for that,” said West.
The price the city is paying was further reduced
by eliminating a drainage system the city’s contracted engineer, Sebago
Technics, determined “was not truly necessary.” That reasoning was due in part,
said Gailey, to the fact that trenches called for in the design would have
required digging into the root systems of the large silver maples that surround
the site.
“This monument means a lot to a lot of different
people and we think we owe it to the veterans of this community and their
families to see it completed and not put off to a later phase,” said Gailey.
“But it didn’t seem like the drainage system was really called for. That area
is not that wet, anyway.”
However, the fact that the system had been
called for in the original design did draw a firm rebuke at Monday’s workshop
meeting from Mayor Patti Smith.
While she stopped short of suggesting that other
aspects of the Mill Creek overhaul may be over-designed, she did suggest
councilors may want to take a closer look at future phases.
“You have my full support around this phase,”
she said, “but how would we know in the future what is necessary design? Many
parties come before us and we are not engineers and we will not know all the
right questions to ask. I just want to put a note of caution that we keep our
eyes peeled next time around, to be sure it is designed well for the needs and
the function.”
A CLOSER LOOK
To see a video of the July 3 “flash mob” staged at the Veterans Green Service Monuments for Dane Porter a U.S. Army soldier on leave from Afghanistan, visit the Facebook page of Broadway Variety at www.facebook.com/broadwayvariety.
To help bring six black-granite benches to the monument green, send donations to:
South Portland Service Monument
City of South Portland
25 Cottage Road
P.O. Box 9422
South Portland, ME 04106
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