After a heated discussion, the Steelville Board of Aldermen on March 2 voted to have city employees disassemble and salvage lumber from the old gazebo roof sitting at the former city hall location behind The Main Deck. 

Public Works Director Jason Evans said that, weather permitting, disassembly should be completed by the end of the week. He doesn’t anticipate it being too involved and plans to save the beadboard ceiling and some of the interior structure for future use.

With summer around the corner and many concerned that the old roof is an eyesore for tourists and residents alike, the gazebo has once again become a topic of discussion in the town. Steelville’s Parks Panel has been working for multiple years to relocate the roof to the hill at Hoppe Spring Park. 

Posts were installed in the ground at the park as a new base for the gazebo. Parks Panel member James Hayes told the aldermen that he already paid $400 to Chris and Son Towing last year to haul the roof onto them. 

The roof was first removed after city commissioners learned the structure wasn’t sound in 2018. A group of citizens attempted to fight the removal of the gazebo and only succeeded in obtaining the roof, which then became city property. 

Ever since, aldermen have been weighing whether or not it is structurally sound enough to be relocated onto a new base. 

“The first consensus I’ve heard for the last two years is ‘get it off the back of the creek,’ because there are businesses downtown,” Alderman Ward 1 Bill Bennett said. “And we do own some property behind where the old city hall is, but we need to make the creek desirable (so) that people can park back there during the summertime, because we are a summer pass through town. And the one comment I had 50 times is, ‘hey, move that thing.’”

Hayes pointed out that it was Bennett’s idea to move the roof to the former city hall location last May. Before that, the roof sat on a concrete pad at the Community Building for several years. It was moved due to concerns about it being an eyesore, kids climbing on it and it taking up space used for barbecuing. 

Bennett acknowledged that moving it to the former city hall location was his idea, but said the previous location wasn’t a good place for it either. It couldn’t be moved directly from the Community Building to Hoppe Spring Park due to concerns about the liability of storing the roof in the park before a construction project could be completed.

Mayor Terry Beckham said he thinks the gazebo should’ve never been removed from its original spot on the lawn of the Crawford County Courthouse, and Alderwoman Ward 2 Lula Patterson agreed. The structure had been in poor shape and was leaning on the courthouse.

“It was old when I was a little kid, so it’s well over 100 years old,” Beckham said. “I grew up looking at that thing.”

“I just wish there’d be some way to get it up there and get it set up (at Hoppe Spring Park) so people can enjoy it,” Patterson said.

According to Alderman Ward 1 Curtis Crouch, the only original, historical piece remaining from the gazebo is the steeple. The gazebo was re-roofed and the decking lumber on it is from the 1950s. The city plans to make salvageable pieces available to the Steelville Historical Society if they would like them. 

“The deal is you gotta vote to say you want to keep it, and let’s move forward instead of dragging the feet,” Hayes said. “Because, I mean, I’ve been on this for years. And I don’t mind volunteering to help get it up, because that’s what I agreed to three years ago.”

Bennett said that if the roof were to be relocated to the new base at the park, the council would need to find and pay someone to finish the project.

“Jason (Evans) and his men, they have other things to do everyday,” Bennett said.

“You have never ever wanted the gazebo up,” Patterson said. “Never ever. So we might as well (tear it up) to satisfy you.”

“I never said I didn’t want it up there,” Bennett said. “I’d like to have a gazebo, not maybe that one.”

Bennett referenced the community meeting on revitalizing downtown that he attended the week prior and said many of the local citizens in attendance were proponents of getting rid of the roof.

“My personal opinion is I don’t think it’s worth putting back up,” Alderman Ward 2 Jason Ward said. “But I am not a structural engineer guy. I’m just going off of when I have looked at it – every month for the past umpteen years – sit behind the Community Building, watching it deteriorate. It does not look to me, if we put it up in the shape that it’s in, that it would be anything beneficial to the city of Steelville.”

Ward, Crouch and Bennett voted to have the city disassemble the roof and save any salvageable parts. Patterson did not officially cast a vote.

“I got nothing to say,” she said, after Ward, Crouch and Bennett voted yes.

The posts at Hoppe Spring Park will be removed, the holes will be filled and the city is reimbursing Hayes for the $400 he spent on hauling from funds that had previously been appropriated toward moving the roof. 

“Well, I hate to see it go, but it’s gone too far now,” Beckham said.