Through a massive fundraising effort, the water tower in Larned is close to receiving its crown once again.
As of Wednesday morning, the grassroots GoFundMe campaign stood at over $98,000 raised toward an initial fundraising goal of $95,000, and Larned Mayor William Nusser said it is the generosity of a long-time Larned family that has helped bring the project to the cusp of becoming reality.
Nusser said he was contacted on Friday, June 18, by the Golden Belt Community Foundation, which manages the Glenn and Elaine Mull Family Fund. The fund was established in memory of Glenn and Elaine Mull, long-time area residents who, along with their daughter, Amy Harter, and granddaughter, Samantha Harter, lost their lives in a Tennessee plane crash in 2014.
GBCF Executive Director Christy Tustin said when surviving family members were made aware of the efforts to raise funds to restore the water tower’s iconic lights, the family requested GBCF to match any further donations to the water tower project at a two-to-one match, meaning for every dollar donated, GBCF would contribute $2 from the Glenn and Elaine Mull Family Fund.
At the time of the matching pledge, the fundraising campaign had around $45,000, Tustin said. Nusser said between June 18, when the city announced the match, and Tuesday morning, roughly an additional $13,000 in donations had been pledged, resulting in a match of around $26,000 from the fund, leaving the campaign less than $1,000 short of the goal.
With the fundraising goal now nearly met, the project will now go before the Larned City Council at its July 6 meeting for final approval.
If approved, Nusser anticipates work will begin sometime in August or September. The city’s goal is to have the lights installed in time to light them for the first time on Thanksgiving night for the upcoming holiday season.
About the project
According to the best records the city has, the iconic “Larned Crown” dates back to around the 1930s.
For close to 80 years, the water tower’s lights lit sky during the holiday season, serving, Nusser said, as a “beacon of home” for generations of area residents.
The old lights were accessible only by a ladder that ran up to an observation ramp around the tank of the tower.
In 2011, though, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) advised the city the ladder did not meet current safety standards and would have to be taken down, leaving crews unable to reach the top of the water tower to put up and maintain the lights.
One of the goals with the new setup is to rectify this by installing permanent LED sealed lights that will have a protective lens from hail/debris and water, with a 100,000 hour life bulb. This is intended to replicate the original setup as closely as possible, while allowing the lights to be virtually maintenance-free.
One of the bid specifications is for the lights on the water tower to be visible from five to ten miles away, using the Radium Bridge outside Radium as a rough marker. The goal, Nusser said, to serve as a symbol for people driving into Larned that they are coming back home.
When the project was first brought before the City Council, there had already long been broad community support for seeing the lights on the water tower restored. In fact, he said, several separate fundraisers had already taken place in support of a potential project.
Because of that enduring support, Nusser said he approached the council to seek approval to bid out the project to contractors to determine a potential cost. Bids were sought throughout March and April.
The city received bids from two contractors, and selected a bid from Topeka-based Falk Architects for around $100,000 at the May 3 meeting.
At that meeting, Nusser said he requested the council provide the city a 60-day window to finish raising funds for the project, since significant community fundraising efforts had already taken place, and several more community members were still interested in contributing. The GoFundMe campaign began in the week following that meeting.
Nusser said the project is unique in that fundraisers are not usually done to support city projects. With such a swell of grassroots support for such an iconic project, he wanted to give the community an opportunity to feel like they were a part of bringing the restoration project to fruition.
With so many from past generations having fond memories of the lights, Nusser told a crowd at June 10 Chamber of Commerce Coffee he wants younger generations to be able to grow up with those same memories.
“We want them when they’re in their 60s and 70s, to remember that, ‘the Christmas lights were on when I grew up,’” he said.
