Why’s That question asker Phil Dietrich and I met in the Vine Neighborhood in May, off Crosstown Parkway.
We were by three ponds that are popular fishing holes near downtown Kalamazoo, close to the one Phil calls "lower" Crosstown Pond, and that city officials call “Pond Number Three.”
A white object is floating in the center. From a distance it looks like a small buoy or a boat fender.
“At first I saw it, I thought it was litter or, you know, just flotsam," Phil said.
"But I noticed that it was always in the middle of the pond, so obviously it's moored somehow, and I couldn't figure out why.”
That prompted Phil's "Why's That?" question.
“Why is there a fender or a buoy in the middle of the lower Crosstown Pond?”
James Baker, the City of Kalamazoo’s public services director, met us at the pond to shed some light on the mysterious object.
Baker said the wetlands along Axtell Creek on the edge of the Vine Neighborhood used to be celery fields and the area has always been prone to flooding. In the early 1940s, the ponds were added to collect stormwater runoff from the road.
“With the construction of Crosstown, they wanted to provide some attenuation for those flood events for Axtell Creek so that it would have a space to flood during high rain events.”
Baker said surface aerator fountains were added to the ponds 25 years ago. They had a trumpet-shaped spray.
As for the floating object, “That's what we believe to be an anchor for one of those surface aerators. So, it sounds like the surface aerators came out, but the anchor never was removed.”
How did the fountains get there in the first place?
In the 1990s, Rayline Latchaw Manni was an intern and later an employee with a community group called Vine Ventures. It led an effort to spruce up Park Street, “the gateway to downtown Kalamazoo.”
Park Street runs between the ponds.
“It was apparent that that street in particular wasn't making the best impression on people that were coming to work, visit, live in the neighborhood. And so, the concept of this project came about through that,” Manni said.
In 1998, Vine Ventures received funding to improve the area.
Initially called the Park Street Renaissance Project, it was expanded to include Burdick Street and renamed the Southern Gateways Renaissance Project. Manni was hired to oversee it.
The architectural designs for the project that she provided include some plans that were never realized. But others were. Like repaving Park Street, replacing street lights and signs, adding a gazebo, and fountain aerators on either side of Park.
The fountain at Pond Number Three is not on the drawings. Manni thinks the city added it later.
“It wouldn't have been a surprise though if they wanted to kind of continue that aesthetic,” she said.
Richard Skalski was a Kalamazoo senior construction engineer back then. He said the Vine Ventures plan lined up with the city’s goals of controlling algae and improving circulation in the ponds.
“We were more concerned with the element of the algae dieback or where it was sealing the bottom of the basin themselves. But because of the nature of the fountain, it also offered the opportunity for aesthetic benefit,” Skalski said.
Aerator fountains don’t last forever.
A photo shows the one in Pond Number Three still going in 2008. But by the time James Baker of public services started in 2013, it was gone, as were the fountains in the other ponds.
Why the anchor wasn’t removed in Pond Number Three remains a mystery. Baker said the aquatic life is thriving now and the city has no plans to remove it.
“Not to say that that couldn't happen, it's just not on a radar at the moment,” he said.
Back at the pond, Skalski and Manni tell our question-asker Phil Dietrich about the fountain project that was part of the urban revitalization plan for the Vine Neighborhood in the late 1990s.
I asked Phil if he remembers it.
“I do remember the fountains," he said.
"But I'd forgotten about them because they've been gone for a long time. I didn't connect the buoy with the fountain at all.”
As for Manni, whose job on the Southern Gateways Renaissance Project was her first job after graduating from Kalamazoo College, she said she'd like to see them again.
“It would be really lovely to have the fountains back for the aesthetics, even if the water quality is such that it's not a necessity anymore. It would be a lovely touch for the gateway."
And Phil agreed.
"I think the fountains looked good.”
