Give the city of Mentor credit for all that it provides to make things interesting for residents and visitors.
For starters, the city is occupied by a wide variety of retail stores and restaurants. The city also presents its annual Mentor Rocks concert series and holds yearly festivals in the summer and winter.
In addition, Mentor offers an array of activities for people of all ages through its parks and recreation programming.
While Mentor has many longstanding traditions, the city also is planning a couple of new attractions that were highlighted in recent News-Herald stories.
In one of those endeavors, Mentor City Council has awarded a contract to Great Lakes Crushing Limited for the Mentor Marsh Public Access Tower Project, The News-Herald’s William Tilton reported.
According to Mentor City Engineer Dave Swiger, bids were opened on Dec. 12 for the construction of a 100-foot-tall observation tower with a 25-foot by 25-foot observation deck at the top.
The bid package consisted of a base bid and three alternates. The two bids received ranged from a low of $1,799,150 to a high of $1,878,000.
The city decided to award the base bid plus alternate 2, which includes hot-dipped galvanizing on all structural steel and a painted finish.
Great Lakes Crushing, of Willowick, submitted the lowest total base bid plus alternate 2 of $1,837,159.
“It has taken a little while to get to this point,” Mentor City Manager Ken Filipiak said at a City Council meeting on Jan. 20. “We had to get through some conversations with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and this was also approved by the voters.”
The engineer’s opinion of probable construction cost was $1,850,000. The access tower project has been awarded $450,000 in state funding.
The scheduled completion date for this project is 270 days after notice to proceed, which is approximately nine months or sometime in the fall.
The Mentor Marsh was dedicated as Ohio’s first state nature preserve in 1971.
Another noteworthy initiative moved forward in Mentor when City Council recently awarded a contract to Coopermill Bronzeworks Limited to cast and deliver a 7-foot bronze statue of U.S. President James A. Garfield, who lived in Mentor from 1876 to 1881.
The statue proposal, accepted at the Jan. 20 council meeting, was dated Jan. 10 for an amount not to exceed $150,000, Tilton reported.
Filipiak said the city is planning activities and projects to coincide with the nation’s 250th anniversary. One component proposed is the commissioning of a statue on city property memorializing Garfield to be unveiled by July 4.
Filipiak said they are planning to place the statue near the front of the building at Civic Center grounds just before the July 4 event.
The city made a formal request for qualifications for sculptors. Four proposals were received and it was determined that Alan Cottrill, doing business as Coopermill Bronzeworks Limited, is best qualified to create and produce the bronze statue.
“We are very excited to work with Mr. Cottrill, who is both a native Ohioan — from Zanesville — and one of the nation’s leading sculptors with an international reputation,” Filipiak said in a memo to council. “He has cast into bronze nearly 400 large-scale figures and over 1,000 busts and smaller statues. The larger statutes include 19 presidents, and notably, a statue of Thomas Edison that is one of Ohio’s two statues permanently displayed in the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall. He has also created and cast a bronze statue of President Rutherford B. Hayes for the city of Delaware.”
“Cottrill is a world-renowned sculptor and we are pretty lucky to get him,” Filipiak added. “He has done this kind of work for other communities in the past, and I think it will be a wonderfully nice addition to our community.”
The $150,000 proposal is inclusive of a 36-inch clay scale model for review and approval, bronze casting of a 7-foot scale statue and delivery. The city will be responsible for placement.
Filipiak said the price is in line with what was expected and advised in his memo Cottrill is confident delivery can be made by July 2.
The News-Herald believes that the Mentor Marsh Public Access Tower and the new statue of President Garfield are both exciting endeavors that will be sure to draw many visitors. Mentor city government leaders who played a role in planning and approving both projects deserve to be congratulated.