About 150 feet of the Lakeland Park stone wall fronting Forman Street (state routes 13 and 20) is gone — it has been dismantled and the stones moved back into the park while a local contractor works to repair and reconstruct a portion of the historic wall that had become so unsteady as to be hazardous.

The project, which the village board approved in August and is expected to be completed next spring, will not only shore up the base of the wall and to make the structure more secure, it will also create a new gated entrance to the park by Carpenter’s Barn, which will help make the park and the barn more user-friendly to the community.

“We have been monitoring the condition of the wall for several years and determined that it was time to break the piggy bank and address the rapidly deteriorating front section of the wall,” said Trustee Amy Mann, the board’s point person on the wall and the Carpenter’s Barn restoration projects. “Besides the obvious aesthetic benefits of the restoration, the project will dovetail into the Carpenter’s Barn Restoration project and tie into our bigger picture plans to enhance public usage of the park.”

The board put out a call for bids for the wall restoration work in July, and received four bids in August ranging from $88,000 to nearly $400,000. At its Aug. 8 regular meeting, the board accepted the lowest bid of $88,000 from the Cazenovia company Expert Building Services, owned by Mike Walker.

The project is being funded by the designated capital fund set aside specifically for work on the historic park wall when its deteriorated state was recognized some years ago, Mann said. When the state Department of Transportation raised the grade of Forman Street (state routes 13/20), it placed pressure on the wall at that location and accelerated its shifting, she said.

“Anyone who saw the wall from the inside of the park will recall that giant chunks of stone were falling out of it and in some places one could see right through the wall,” Mann said.

Walker, who is working in cooperation with the village Department of Public Works crews, started working on the wall on Sept. 23 and has already repaired and repointed a 40-foot section near the park’s entrance, said village Public Works Administrator Bill Carr.

The 150-foot section being rebuilt — which is currently screened off by an orange mesh fence — has already had the iron fence and capstones removed, the wall itself dismantled and the stones stacked about 20 feet back into the park.

“They’re literally taking the wall apart stone-by-stone,” Carr said.

The project will include the installation of four-foot concrete footers that the wall will set on, which will help prevent major shifting, he said.

The timeline for completion of the wall reconstruction is weather-dependent, but it will most likely be completed in spring 2014, Carr said.

When the new wall is complete, a 10-foot, double-hinged iron gate will be installed near Carpenter’s Barn, which will create a new access point into the park and barn. This will tie into the new French doors that were added on the north side of the barn, the beginnings of a concrete patio that were poured in that area this summer and an eventual pathway that will connect to the parking lot, Mann said.

“Many of the barn’s current uses, such as the summer rec program and the rowing club’s training center, in addition to potential future uses such as increased L.L. Bean recreational opportunities or community events will be facilitated by adding an access point there,” she said.

Jason Emerson is editor of the Cazenovia Republican. He can be reached at [email protected].