IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (KIFI) – For those who asking questions about the changing Idaho Falls skyline, we have answers. Local News 8 in the morning brought the City of Idaho Falls’ Public Information Officer, Eric Grossarth, to explain more about the new structure, how it will look, and what’s next.
It’s the new Idaho Falls water tower just one step closer to being finished. Public information officer and the guy with the coolest t-shirt in town, Eric Grossarth is here on the set with us. This is what happened yesterday on that GoPro time lapse even amidst a little snow shower. This was the beginning of the ascent to heaven that bowl for the new water tower took a. Over 4.5 hours to move to the top. Eric, number one, love the shirt. The history of our water tower show everybody yeah, so we got a shirt here, uh, custom made, but we had a staff member make a great logo, uh, kind of commemorating the four towers we have in our history by the fall. So tell us about this new addition to our skyline. What’s next for the tower. Yeah, so the steel crews will still be in town for the next few weeks, putting on the top of that bowl, the green turtle shells kind of what we called it yesterday. It does look like a turtle shell, but they’ll be working to put that top on and then it will get a fresh paint job and connected to the city’s water system. OK, so we have a live picture of the water tower this morning with its first sunrise over the big city. And there it is live this morning on the left, on the right is what will that will eventually look like that. Yes, so that’s the goal. So it’s gonna say Idaho Falls on it. Yes, yes, it will have the city signature, the waves that everybody calls it, we’ll have that on there, but there is kind of a little surprise to that.
So there are gonna be LED lights on the water tower so we can make it whatever color you want. So whether you’re in Idaho Falls High School or a Skyline Grizzly, we can, uh, change it to blue or orange. How are you gonna decide? Well, whoever wins, right? So we could have a lot of options for colors here on this water. Here’s the live picture right now from downtown Idaho Falls. That’s what it looks like this morning. The green and gray exterior is not the final product, so it will be painted and there will be LED lights at the bottom of that which will yield the colors or where will the.
Lights be on the top it’s painted white, so the top part will be painted white, the steel, and then there will be lights that shine up up onto it and down from the top on the whole thing is gonna be lit up. So this is like having a new UFO. I mean, I mean with the light. See, the mayor had told me about that. Everybody’s like, no, no, we don’t believe you, Jeff. I know Mayor Casper told me this like 3 years ago, but the idea is to be able to use this as a symbol of the city, make it red, white, and blue for 4th of July. Make it purple for Alzheimer’s Month. You can do all kinds of things with it so you can be very creative. When do you expect this thing to get lit? You know, we still have a few months left, uh, of construction throughout the summer they’ll be finalizing painting and getting everything up and running, but hopefully by the end of the summer, uh, this fall we’ll be ready to go to provide more water for I don’t. How many baths could I take from the water? I knew that was coming. I knew that. Well, how big is your tub, Jeff? That’s the real question. I float, so just so you know, so that’ll display some of the water. There’s how much? a million gallons. So the old town. half a million. This will be a million gallon of water tank. What’s the cost of this? Uh, roughly 8.5, 9 million somewhere in the ballpark there. And then the big question can I climb the old tower before we take it down and show everybody what it looks like from most be careful with your, you know, I don’t think they let people climb out too often. That’s that’s illegal. So when will that be coming down? So we gotta get the new tower up and running operational, and then they’ll of course go out to bid to. With the project to remove that so we don’t have a set date, uh, but we gotta get the new one finished. What are we gonna do with that metal, the metal, so they’re still working through kind of what that will look like. Uh, we’ll see what pieces we can save and then of course one of the attractive pieces to remove that tower would be able to recycle that some way recycle. I wanna build a house out of it so let’s put, let’s let’s put a let’s put a tin roof on on Keefer Island’s uh shed out there, man.. Hey, I gotta have one of those shirts. Congratulations too. That’s a major move for this city, big move, a lot of hard work from a lot of people can’t wait to see it. Take one more live look at our first sunrise that is coming over our new skyline in Idaho Falls. I appreciate your time, Eric.
