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Bell and tower to get new home at Civic Center or Oak Meadow
By Gloria I. Wang
Before the end of the year, visitors to the Los Gatos Town Plaza Park will experience a myriad of new features, including a "naturalistic" fountain, historic paving and possibly a new and improved sound system.
What will very obviously be missing is the historic bell and bell tower, which have been in the park since 1988.
The removal of the tower, along with some landscaping changes, were decided by the Los Gatos Town Council at two recent meetings May 14 and May 20.
Councilman Joe Pirzynski compared the new design for the park with the previous design that the council had approved in September. "This much better reflects what the council intended," he said.
Despite opposition from the public and the fact that construction on the park began two months ago, council members voted to move the 103-year-old bell and tower to either the Los Gatos Civic Center complex or Oak Meadow Park. Town staff is scheduled to remove the tower May 29.
The council also decided to eliminate some of the sidewalk included in the project and plant five trees along the west side of S. Santa Cruz Avenue. Council members expressed a strong preference for those trees to be deciduous London Planes like those directly across S. Santa Cruz Avenue in front of the Willow Street Wood-Fired Pizza restaurant. But it left the final selection to town staff.
At the May 20 meeting, the council continued a discussion that it had started a week prior on the appropriate home for the bell.
Vice Mayor Sandy Decker suggested the University Avenue Santa Clara County Fire Department fire station as a possible location, but bell tower designer John Spaur disagreed. He argued that people tend to stand around and look at the tower and that siting it in the less-populated University Avenue area wouldn't allow for much foot traffic.
Children are fascinated by the bell, said resident Mike Wasserman, and the fire station is less user-friendly for youth. "I think the bell is the jewel of the crown," he said.
Former Santa Clara County Fire Chief Doug Sporleder said he had originally thought of the fire station also. "In scrambling to find a prominent spot, that came to my mind," he said. However, he agreed that, at the station, the bell tower would be less visible to the community and less available for the public.
Sporleder did mention that he is open to placing the tower somewhere else. "The only thing I'm adverse to is losing it," he said.
John Lochner had been on the original committee to install the tower in the late 1980s. He pointed out that the committee had taken input from the community back then and that no other location was as appropriate as the plaza. In the 15 years since, Lochner said, there have been no complaints about the decision.
Councilman Steve Glickman came up with the idea of placing the tower at Oak Meadow Park, near the Billy Jones Wildcat Railroad. There, the bell's ringing would not present a noise problem because of the existing railroad horn, and children would have easy access to the tower.
The sole speaker who wanted to remove the feature was business owner Shirley Henderson. Henderson said that she envisioned the town plaza as a place where the community gathers, and that the tower would take up space. "We really need that space for people," she said. According to Henderson, the civic center is the right spot for the tower.
Many argued that history is at stake with the removal of the bell.
"The larger theme here is, 'Can we please try as much as we can to preserve the vanishing history of our town, the things that make us unique, the things that make us Los Gatos, that separate us and give us an identity?' My plea is, let's try to restore, as faithfully as possible, our history so that we can pass it on intact," said Dr. Richard Fox, who wanted to keep the tower at the town plaza.
"The bell tower deserves a place of honor somewhere in the town," Councilman Steve Blanton said. "Having something that has a certain amount of grace and elegance like the bell in front of our civic center is a big step up over where we have been in the past. Its architecture goes much better with the civic center than where it's at now."
Council members emphasized that they did not want to remove the tower from the town but find it a place where it would fit in better.
"I don't know that we are sacrificing ... the historical here," Decker said. "The new design of this park is steeped in history."
Pirzynski--the only council member supportive of leaving the tower at the town plaza for the time being--suggested actually making the bell more historical by turning it into a "historical presentation." He mentioned somehow using the bell as a display for how the town has survived disasters in its past.
While Spaur admitted to not maintaining the bell over the past five years and promised to make it work again, Pirzynski said, "I think actually we--all of us--need to share blame in the lack of care given to this facility over the last several years. It's frankly embarrassing, the way the deterioration has been allowed to take place."
Where the tower will actually be installed is still in question, as the council decided to consult with the town's historic preservation committee, parks commission and historian Bill Wulf for historicity and input.
"We want to give it the best home it can possibly have," Mayor Randy Attaway said.
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Los Gatos, California Since 1881
