Zack Moore Eagle Scout Project

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

Get­ting across Prairie Run Creek on the north side of West Cherry Street in Sun­bury has been a prob­lem for a long time. The side­walk dead-ends in front of Sun­bury Memo­r­ial Park and starts again west of the Sun­bury United Methodist Church (SUMC) lower park­ing lot entrance. To cross the creek pedes­tri­ans are forced to walk on the edge of the road­way for almost the length of a foot­ball field, or cross the heav­ily trav­eled road­way to access the side­walk in front of Com­mu­nity Library.

That prob­lem may soon be solved, but not by some large-dollar pub­lic works project. Big Wal­nut High School junior Zack Moore, a mem­ber of Boy Scouts of Amer­ica Simon Ken­ton Coun­cil Troop 192, plans to build a pedes­trian bridge across Prairie Run Creek con­nect­ing the side­walk in front of the ceme­tery with the Sun­bury United Methodist Church park­ing lot as an Eagle Scout project.

Moore vis­ited Sun­bury Vil­lage Coun­cil last Sep­tem­ber and explained both the prob­lem and his vision for fix­ing the prob­lem. Moore described an eight– to 10 foot-wide, 40-foot long flat foot­bridge 50 to 75 feet north of Cherry Street. The east side would have a con­nec­tor to the side­walk in front of the ceme­tery; the west side would have a walk ter­mi­nat­ing in the SUMC park­ing lot.

Sunbury’s coun­cil mem­bers liked his idea, and Moore sub­se­quently received a let­ter from then Sun­bury Mayor Len Weath­erby grant­ing per­mis­sion to pro­ceed with the project.

“The foot­bridge would not only be a side­walk con­nec­tor, it would also open up park­ing at the church for funer­als in the ceme­tery,” Moore said. “I’ve held meet­ings with the church and they are behind the project. I’ve also met with Sun­bury Vil­lage Admin­is­tra­tor Dave Mar­tin and vil­lage engi­neer Wes Hall — we’ve talked about each step of the project.”

Moore said the Troop 192 lead­er­ship and the Simon Ken­ton Eagle Scout Board have also approved his project; and CT Con­sul­tants will make the project drawings.

“The goal is to begin con­struc­tion in the spring and have it com­pleted by Labor Day of 2013,” Moore said. “Over the win­ter we’ll do a lot of fundrais­ing — we esti­mate the project will cost no more than $25,000, includ­ing labor costs. If we have more vol­un­teers and labor and mate­ri­als dona­tions the costs will go down.”

Moore said major costs would be deck­ing, rail­ing on the bridge, exca­vat­ing and con­crete. Two I-beams have already been donated for the foot­bridge span; vol­un­teers will be needed to power-wash and paint the I-beams.

“We’re plan­ning on hav­ing an infor­mal com­mit­tee at the church to help with sign­ing up vol­un­teers and fundrais­ing,” Moore said. “The next step is iden­ti­fy­ing con­crete and lum­ber sources. Ron Ste­men Exca­vat­ing has vol­un­teered to help with exca­va­tion. We’ll need cer­ti­fied welders, a con­crete con­trac­tor and sup­plier, a lum­ber source and assem­blage, and gen­eral laborers.

“The vil­lage agreed to take over the foot­bridge when the project is com­plete,” Moore con­tin­ued. “There will be a release date and open­ing cer­e­mony, and a plaque will be installed iden­ti­fy­ing all sig­nif­i­cant donors.”

Moore said right now he espe­cially wants to make cer­tain that the Prairie Run Foot­bridge project has enough com­mit­ted sup­port to proceed.

To vol­un­teer labor, mate­ri­als or major con­struc­tion assis­tance to the project, or for addi­tional infor­ma­tion, email Zack Moore at < bsa.sunburybridge@gmail.com >.

Posted by Gary Henery on Sep 21 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.