Do the holidays have you feeling drained? At least you’re not the Goodale Park pond.
Crews this week drained the pond located in the heart of Goodale Park near Columbus’ Short North neighborhood. It's part of a project to relocate some problem-plagued pumps used to power the pond’s fountain.
Issues with the pond started in 2012 with a leak caused by the fountain installed a year earlier. That pushed the city to spend $144,600 to line the bottom of the pond. That didn’t work, but another repair funded by the group Friends of Goodale Park later in 2012 did.
In 2007, the group commissioned the wedding cake-shaped fountain that includes two bronze elephants.
Friends of Goodale Park president Jason Kentner says the fountain has sat dormant since 2017 because the pumps installed under the pond’s surface have been hard to repair.
“And it just led to us, along with the city, make the decision to have the mechanical system replaced and move outside of the pond so that it could be more easily maintained,” Kentner says.
Kenter says it’s frustrating to local residents, but they seem to understand.
“You get questions about what’s happening with the fountain because it’s sitting dormant for so long, not so much why the pond is drained, because now I think people see it as ‘O.K., something is being fixed.’”
City Council approved the most recent $330,000 fix earlier this year. Kentner say they expect work to be finished by the spring.
