While Mother Nature’s latest blast of winter weather temporarily put a halt to the ongoing work at Basin Spring Park, progress has been made in recent weeks to repair the foundation of the fountain, and give the area an overall facelift.

Eureka Springs Parks and Recreation Director Sam Dudley said work began on the park — specifically removing the fountain to examine its failing foundation — on Feb. 3.

“As you may have noticed over recent years, the park has been slowly eroding underneath the fountain, resulting in numerous structural issues to the park,” Dudley wrote on the parks department Facebook page the day the project began. “In order to fix it we’ll be having to do some pretty serious excavation in and around the center of the park.”

It didn’t take long to discover the issue with the fountain’s foundation once it was removed, Dudley said Monday, Feb. 17.

“Interestingly, once the fountain was fully disassembled, it was discovered that the reason it was sinking was due to a lack of a proper footer to support its weight,” Dudley said. “The water that spilled over the fountain, along with natural precipitation, was slowly eroding the materials underneath the stonework. This explains why the fountain was sinking more on one side than the other, and why the rest of the park was not showing any signs of similar issues.”

Stacy’s Stone Works of Eureka Springs, the lone bidder to complete the project at a cost of $130,000, will be installing new capstones before rebuilding the foundation, Dudley said.

“Once the new capstones have been acquired, the stonework around the fountain will be rebuilt,” he said. “The fountain itself will be getting sandblasted and powder coated to remove all the residues, then reinstalled.”

While repairing the issues with the fountain is the priority, the parks department is taking advantage of a majority of the park being temporarily closed to also work on other refurbishment projects for the area, a popular gathering point for locals and tourists.

“We are currently in the process of procuring trees to bring in for planting,” Dudley said. “We have also decided that while we are dong all of this work, we may as well completely redo the plaza with a uniform stamped concrete. This not only makes the park look nicer, but it also allows us to move utilities and other things around to make the park flow better overall.”

While the parks commission committed $55,000 toward the project, Dudley said he also got funding commitments of $54,000 from the Eureka Springs City Advertising and Promotion Commission and $21,000 from the Eureka Springs Preservation Society to pay for the fountain repairs.

“This, along with with the $75,210 from the Banks Family Foundation is going to really make Basin Park shine this year,” Dudley said.

While factors such as weather will impact the timeline of having the renovations complete, Dudley said the goal is to have the park fully back open by late April.

“As for completely reopening the entire park, there are too many factors to give a firm date,” he said. “But, we are hoping that the park will be fully reopened by the opening of the CAPC’s concert in the park series at the end of April, featuring the Fossils of Ancient Robots.”