Can a Giant Lava Lamp Save the Town?
SOAP LAKE, Wash. (Reuters) – Build a giant lava lamp and they will come?
Worried that visitors don’t stop at Soap Lake any more even though its medicinal waters reputedly can cure anything from sheep parasites to snake bite, civic leaders are seriously considering trying to revive the tourist trade with a psychedelic blast from the past: a towering 60-foot-high lava lamp in the center of downtown, complete with viewing platform.
After all, look what the Eiffel Tower did for Paris and the Space Needle for Seattle.
“Whether it will ever be finalized, I don’t know, but a lot of people are interested in it,” Mayor Ken Lee told Reuters by telephone. “I’m for anything that will bring tourism back into our city.”
Soap Lake in eastern Washington state has been shrinking since the 1930s, when a devastating drought and the Great Depression nearly erased it from the map. The massive Grand Coulee Dam project nearby brought highways and irrigation channels that kept some businesses alive through the 1960s.
But now two-thirds of its 1,700 inhabitants live in subsidized low-income housing. With little help available from the town, the lava lamp’s champion, architect Brent Blake, is shopping the idea to big glass makers and philanthropists. The price tag, still as nebulous as the goo that would drift around in the lamp, could reach several million dollars.
Microsoft Corp. co-founder and billionaire Paul Allen could make an ideal benefactor, though Blake has yet to speak with him. Among many projects, Allen built a rock ‘n’ roll museum in an unusual colored-blob building next to Seattle’s Space Needle.
“There’s nothing difficult about building this thing, except for the glass vessel, which is basically a giant pop bottle,” Blake said.
There is also no guarantee that drivers will stop for lunch or shopping in nearly deserted downtown Soap Lake. But the glistening hippie throwback would certainly get their attention.
“I just thought: how can we stop the cars driving by on the highway? Then I drew a lava lamp and just thought, this was really cool,” Blake said.
So cool it even has its own web site.
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