Courthouse Fountain Refurbished
County workers recently refurbished the water fountain in the courthouse atrium and saved a bunch of money in the process.
Over the past few years, the cast iron water fountain started rusting to the point where the County had to do something. Pct. 1 Commissioner Jason McBroom said replacing the fountain would cost $10,000 or more.
During the early days of the COVID shutdowns in Fayette County, the County decided to stop taking certain recyclable materials at the recycling center over concerns about virus transmission. The recycling center still took household garbage, but business slowed way down for the recycling center workers.
Paul Zapalac, who heads up the day-to-day operations at the recycling center, came up with a plan to refurbish all of the County’s metal recycling bins while business was slow and the bins weren’t in use.
“We’ve got some great employees, they weren’t just going to sit around and do nothing,” said Pct. 4 Commissioner Tom Muras, who oversees the County’s recycling program.
But Zapalac needed a heavy duty pressure washer to sand blast the recycling bins.
“It all kind of came together,” said McBroom.
The County ended up purchasing the equipment for about $5,000. McBroom, Zapalac and courthouse maintenance workers David Peter and Steven Svec disassembled the fountain, got it out of the courthouse and sandblasted it down to bare metal. They then primed and painted it, reassembled it and reinstalled it in the atrium.
McBroom said even the disassembled pieces of the fountain weighed hundreds of pounds.
“It was not an easy job,” he said.
On top of all that, Zapalac and his crew used the sandblaster to refurbish all of the County’s recycling bins, which should extend their useful life.
The water fountain in the atrium today is not the original water fountain. Former County Judge Ed Janecka told the Record that the original fountain was removed in the late 1940s when the atrium was closed in to install a vault and additional offices. During the courthouse restoration project in the early 2000s, the offices and vault were removed and the atrium was restored. Janecka said he tried finding the old fountain.
“There were rumors it was still around somewhere,” Janecka said.
He said he even searched the property of a former county judge, but it never turned up.
“We had one photograph of the old fountain,” Janecka said.
He eventually found a fountain in North Carolina that looked similar to the original. The County had it shipped to La Grange, and that’s the one in the atrium today.