Is that dream opportunity really a nightmare?
At Mayor Sylvester Turner's request, work on controversial alterations to Mecom Fountain will be paused to allow time to reconsider the project, officials said Friday.
Turner had said Thursday that work on the fountain, which has been criticized as inconsistent with its midcentury design, should proceed because it was three-quarters complete.
In response to the mayor's request, TxDOT will instruct its contractor to suspend work "until further decisions regarding the work underway can be made," said Raquelle Lewis, a spokeswoman for the state agency, which is overseeing the project.
As part of a Hermann Park streetscape improvement project, workers have been applying slabs of limestone to the sides of the concrete fountain's retaining wall. Plans also call for a limestone surface that would protrude over the top of the base.
Preservationists say these features don't fit with the modernist design of the 1964 fountain in the roundabout at Main and Montrose, and they express concern that drilling holes in the retaining wall could cause structural damage.
Friday morning, Turner talked with preservationists, city employees and members of the new mayor's Quality of Life transition team, said Bill Baldwin, a co-chair of the transition team.
Turner contacted James Bass, who leads the state agency, and asked for the pause.
Though eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, the fountain wasn't covered under city historic preservation rules until December, when outgoing Mayor Annise Parker signed its nomination as a city-protected landmark. But by then, permits for the years-in-the-making Hermann Park streetscape project had long since been approved. The city historical commission discovered the work only when commission member Anna Mod drove past the fountain and spotted workmen there.
The costs of stopping the work, which TxDOT estimates is 85 percent complete, have not been determined, Baldwin said.
Federal funds cover 80 percent of the Hermann Park project; the other 20 percent comes from the city of Houston. Though TxDOT has oversight of the project, as the local agent of the federal government, the state has contributed no money to the streetscape project.
Baldwin said he hopes private donors, via a new Friends of the Fountain group, might pay for a historically sensitive renovation.
Preservationists greeted the pause with delight.
How sacred is Mecom Fountain?
© 2019 Hearst Communications, Inc.
