Deciding the fate of Kasson’s Historic Wall

The price tag for fixing the Historic Wall in Kasson has come down substantially, but the question still remains about whether to fix it or demolish it.
The Park and Recreation Commission was scheduled to discuss the limestone wall during its Tuesday, Aug. 18 meeting. It was expected to forward a recommendation onto the City Council, which should hear the issue either Aug. 26 or Sept. 9.
Ron Unger, the city’s Parks and Recreation Supervisor, said the Commission has received two Historic Wall bids. One was to totally demolish and rebuild the wall, and came in at more than $200,000. The second bid was to repair the wall, and that bid came in at significantly less; at $45,000 to $50,000, Unger said.
The City Council will also need to consider repairing the sidewalk in front of the wall. At press time, Unger was waiting on a bid for that.
“They’re going to look at between $45,000 and $50,000 to have the wall totally repaired, and put new stone back in it, have it all tuck pointed and repaired,” Unger said of the decision soon facing the Kasson City Council. The wall is located at Veteran’s Memorial Park, just in front of the swimming pool.
“I think the city fathers really want to repair it,” Unger said. “It’s the funding and where is that going to come from? How can we pay for it? Fifty thousand dollars is still a lot of money. It will come down to the council. That’s where it sits.”
If the wall isn’t repaired, it could lead to an accident where someone gets hurt. Unger called the wall “a safety thing.”
“There are safety issues … such as limestone rock being unstable and falling out of the wall,” he said. “I would not like to see someone walking by or climbing on the wall and have a stone fall on them or give way and they slip and fall.”
The Historic Wall was built during the late 1930s or early 1940s, during the Works Progress Administration (WPA). President Franklin Roosevelt and members of Congress responded to the Great Depression by creating the WPA. Workers made public improvements to parks, roads, bridges, schools and other public structures.
Local historic preservationists are lobbying for the wall to be repaired. The gofundme fundraiser to save the wall has only received $440 in donations, however.
Mantorville Restoration Association board member John Olive repaired the Historic Wall about 10 years ago. It’s deteriorated since then, Olive and Unger agree. Olive met with a master stone mason, John Digley, of Decorah, Iowa, who put in the second bid to repair the wall. “He said, ‘This is a masterpiece. It would be a disaster to take this down,’” Olive recounted. “He said, ‘I can fix it.’”
“That’s been there forever and it’s history,” Olive said. “Once that’s gone, the history is gone.”
“I don’t want to tear everything down,” said Janet Sinning, a Park and Recreation Commission member who started the gofundme appeal on behalf of the wall. “When this first came up I said, ‘No, that’s old and something to see in Kasson.’ I believe in keeping some things old.”
 
Jerry Giese, of the Kasson Alliance for REstoration (KARE), called the Historic Wall “a work of art. I mean look at it, it’s a really nice feature for the park. An accent. If we don’t keep this what will we have left to remind us of what history was?”
KARE received a $5,000 donation toward repair of the wall. Donors can receive a non-profit tax deduction if they donate via KARE. But that still leaves $40,000 to $45,000 – or more, including the sidewalk repair cost – remaining for repairing it.
Unger said people are definitely interested in restoring the city landmark. But where the funding is going to come from remains a tough question to answer.
“Having a project like this, I don’t know how high it is on the priority list,” Unger said of the decision faced soon by the Kasson City Council. “It might get put off to the next year. I know they wanted total figures of the cost to repair this. They’re going to have to decide where the money is going to come from and go from there.”