BEARDMORE — An iconic Highway 11 roadside attraction will get some love and care.
Greenstone municipal council has budgeted $205,000 to fix up the Beardmore Snowman. The nearly-11 metre-tall figure, sometimes dubbed "the world's largest snowman," is in need of repairs to the interior structure and will have a brand new outer coat put on it, said mayor Jamie McPherson.
But that work won’t be done this year, he added, as they’re awaiting word on a funding application to the province to help with the cost.
McPherson said it’s an important project, given how noteworthy the snowman is.
“It's been recognized for years, it was there since I was a kid,” McPherson said. “When you come through (on the highway) and the entrance to Greenstone is the snowman.”
“Everybody knows, ‘OK, I'm in Beardmore.’”
The fixes, however, now aren’t scheduled to be done until next year. The rehabilitation was one of six initiatives that showed up on a postponed projects list in a budget variance analysis presented to Greenstone council on Aug. 11.
Chief administrative officer Mark Wright told council at that meeting that, should the funding come through, the tender still has to go out early in the construction season.
“The type of covering that we're looking at putting on it, you … generally don't want to be doing it in cold weather,” he said.
“It is one of those projects where we actually need to tender much earlier in the year to be able to do (the work) in warmer weather so that it can actually be done properly.”
McPherson said the municipality doesn’t yet know when they’ll hear back from provincial officials on whether their application is successful or not, nor how long the work will take once a contractor is secured as there can always be complications with larger-scale fix-ups.
“Whenever you think of doing a renovation on your house, you open up something and what's the word that comes out other than ‘oops,’” he said. “When you're working on something — something that old — there will be an ‘oops’ somewhere.”
He said the municipality’s budget includes contingency funding should there be issues.
McPherson said the work has been identified as something Greenstone has needed to do for a while now.
“We looked at it a couple of years ago and realized that ‘no we’ve got to get it done,’” he said. “It's in the budget and we'll make it happen, it just won't be this year now.”