A large crane may roll up to the Mahanay Memorial Carillon Tower as soon as next week to begin the actual work of expanding the existing carillon to a full four-octave carillon.
Coming soon to a bell tower near you – a full carillon
“It’s been a long time coming,” county engineer Wade Weiss said Monday after the board of supervisors approved a pair of contracts for the project.
The first step will be to lower nine striker-less inoperative bells hanging at the top of the tower. Those bells, and the 15 striker-less previously purchased bells that have been on display in the courthouse for many years, will be taken to Cincinnati by a crew from The Verdin Company.
The Verdin Company was on board when the bell tower was built 50 years ago and is the general contractor for the maintenance and expansion project.
The five bells that play the Westminster Chime will remain on top of the tower. The existing bell frame will be prepped and painted, and a new bell frame, designed to work with the current structure, will be built and mounted. The new bell frame will hold 33 bells to complete the carillon.
The project will be well underway but not completed when the Bell Tower Community Foundation celebrates the bell tower’s 50th anniversary Oct. 16.
Fundraising for the $440,000 project began in earnest earlier this year and was finished in June when Vision Iowa awarded the foundation an $87,000 Community Attraction and Tourism (CAT) grant. Carole Custer, president of the foundation, spearheaded the fundraising effort.
Per the terms of Floyd Mahanay’s bequest that funded construction of the tower, Greene County owns the tower and is responsible for maintenance of it. The smaller of the two contracts approved Monday is $76,659 for taking down the striker-less bells, installing strikers, and prepping and painting the existing structure.
The larger contract for $363,341 is for the expansion portion of the project and includes 18 new cast bells with strikers and strikers for the 15 bells from the courthouse display case, as well as fabrication and mounting of the new bell structure.
The county is holding both contracts, and on Monday passed a motion to accept a donation from the foundation to pay the expansion contract. Engineer Weiss recommended that the county hold the contracts rather than the Bell Tower Community Foundation because the county, particularly Weiss and the secondary roads department, has extensive experience in contract administration, and because ultimately, the county owns the tower.
