Soap Lake seeking willing lava lamp leaders

City, idea originator unable to take the reigns of project

SOAP LAKE — At this stage, the giant lava lamp is a bit like a jigsaw puzzle.

The pieces of the lava lamp sign donated to the city by Target Corporation currently sit in a warehouse on Port of Ephrata property.

Interested citizens gathered Thursday afternoon in a City Hall conference room to discuss what the picture on the outside of the jigsaw puzzle box should look like — where and what they want the lava lamp sign to be.

"It's time to fish or cut bait," Soap Lake mayor Wayne Hovde told the approximately 21 people at the organizational meeting of the lava lamp project. He said the venture, which began in 2002 as a way to attract tourists to Soap Lake, has captured the attention of people worldwide and, at many of the meetings he attends, the first question he gets is, "Where is the lava lamp at?"

One of the first steps is to select a project leader or leaders to coordinate efforts on the lava lamp and find funding for the project. The city, the Soap Lake Revitalization team and lava lamp idea originator Brent Blake, president and CEO of the Giant Lava Lamp Project, Inc., are all unable.

A committee was formed to get together and work on a position description for advertising purposes.

Funding possibilities for the project, currently estimated to cost $100,000, include such avenues as private foundations and private benefactors, grants on the county, state and federal levels and corporate sponsors.

Grant County Economic Development Council Executive Director Terry Brewer told Hovde and meeting member Burr Beckwith in an earlier meeting that in asking for funds, it would be helpful to have solid figures, including a selected site and an idea of the cost of reassembling and fixing the structure.

Hovde said that the city is open to suggestions from interested members of the public.

"We're a small city that has expanded tremendously, and who knows where we are and what we are because of a lava lamp?" he said, adding that tourists would come through places like Moses Lake, Grand Coulee and Ephrata to see the lava lamp. "This isn't only helping Soap Lake, this is helping the whole county, the whole area."

There are presently two possible sites for the lava lamp sign to go, one in a corner of the Soap Lake City Park and the other at the corner of First Avenue South and Canna Street. Many people at the meeting voiced their agreement that the lava lamp sign needed to be positioned aesthetically, close to amenities and to other town attractions.

Moses Lake consulting engineer Dennis Parr said he has spoken with the sign's original manufacturers, and hopes to bring them out to examine the potential sites for the sign, and see whether they will support the lamp or not. Each potential site has pros and cons, but at this stage, it appears those cons can be addressed, Parr said.

At the conclusion of the nearly two-hour-long meeting, those in attendance had agreed to conduct public tours of the pieces of the lava lamp sign in the Port of Ephrata warehouse Aug. 6 from 4 to 6 p.m. From there, if desired, people may go and see the potential sites for the lava lamp sign structure.

"There was just a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of support and a unanimous expression of wanting to get it done and all of that, so that's a real positive," Blake said of the meeting.

Parr agreed.

"Basically, I heard a commitment in there to go ahead with phase one, which is to get the original design engineers out here, start taking a serious look at it and start the planning for putting it back together," he said.

"If you pick 21 people out of a town of this size at 2 p.m. at 90 degrees and bring them into a room to discuss and be positive about putting something up, I think that's a success in itself," Hovde said. While everyone was on a high and positive, they were realists, he noted. "They were down to the actual point of how to raise the money, how are we going to get it engineered, where are we going to do it, how do we continue the operation of it?"

Kathi Trantham said she was glad people came to the meeting.

"It's nice to have everybody's cards on the table, so that we know what to do next," she said. "It is a real thing and it will get done."

Burr Beckwith said he was pleased with the energy of the people, and the number of people who turned out. People were ready to step forward and do something, he said.

"The fact that we had volunteers and we had some focus, especially the part about getting a lava lamp manager," Beckwith said. "I think that that was the focus, and that's my primary concern too — that we get somebody to coordinate and manage the projects."