Workers are nearly done putting a new roof on Belle Isle’s stables amid a push to revise the island park’s historic designation.
The stable project started in 2011, after conditions in the horseshoe-shaped building had gotten so bad, “you could see the sky,” Sarah Earley, chairwoman of the Belle Isle Conservancy, tells Megha Satyanarayana of the Free Press. “The wooden beams in that building were rotted, all the way through.”
Repairs to the stables’ roof, and eventually the stables itself, are among the latest in restoration attempts on the island. The aquarium is being revamped. The Dossin Great Lakes Museum just completed a multimillion-dollar face-lift, and the Belle Isle Conservancy is raising funds to replace broken Pewabic tiles in the James Scott Memorial Fountain. The city and the conservancy also are planning to repair the Nancy Brown Peace Carillon.
