January 31, 2001

Fountain's Buyer Hopes to Sell it in One Piece
SHAFER SHELDON

The company that recently bought the Louisville Falls Fountain for $15,750 is making a last-ditch effort to find someone who can put it to use - perhaps as a small floating restaurant.

Mobile Maintenance and Repair of Borden, Ind., a marine-service company, initially said it probably would remove the usable parts and sell the rest of the fountain as scrap.

But yesterday Dennis Tinker, an associate with Mobile Maintenance, said, ``We want to see if we can sell it whole.''

Tinker said Mobile Maintenance ran an advertisement offering the fountain for sale yesterday in a regional trade magazine, Boats & Harbors. He said Mobile Maintenance will wait at least a month for responses. ``It would be expensive to make it a fountain again. But a lot of people in the metro area think it still has some sentimental value.''

He said some marine companies have expressed interest in parts of the fountain. He also said he has had a feeler or two from representatives of companies he declined to name that might be interested in using the fountain intact. He said it could be a small floating restaurant, and it's big enough that someone probably could live in it.

Mobile Maintenance bought the fountain early this month from the city of Louisville. The Louisville Water Co., the fountain's caretaker, had been unable to get another city interested and wanted to stop paying the $55-a-day fee for storing the fountain.

The fountain has not operated since its main pump exploded in 1999 officials estimate it would cost $500,000 to repair.

Tinker said if the company can't sell the fountain whole, ``We will probably salvage the equipment . . . piecemeal it out,'' probably to marine companies.

The usable parts include four pumps, searchlights, deck winches and switching gears, Tinker said.

He said his firm wants at least to recover its investment in the fountain, which operated in the Ohio River starting in 1986 - a gift to the community from Mary and Barry Bingham Sr.

Mike Kimmel, spokesman for the Waterfront Development Corp., which helped promote the fountain, said yesterday that he doubts that there is enough public support or interest to make the Falls Fountain operational again.

Earlier this month, waterfront corporation spokeswoman Marlene Grissom called the sale price the ultimate indignity. `It seems very little for all the pleasure it brought people,'' she said.