Drive the loop around Ensley Lane, Overhill Road, and Mission Drive this month and the gap is hard to miss. One of the eight marble columns that have anchored Verona Columns Park for more than a hundred years is simply gone, its base wrapped behind a section of temporary fencing where a piece of the retaining wall used to be.
It looks like the start of something going wrong. It is actually the middle of the city catching a problem before it does.
What Actually Happened on September 15
The city didn't lose a column to storm damage or negligence. It removed one on purpose. On Tuesday, September 15, crews took down the western column closest to Overhill Road, along with its concrete cap, stone cap, and base, and pulled out a section of the adjoining retaining wall. The goal was to see, physically, how the columns were built a century ago so engineers could figure out how to save the ones still standing.
The city council approved the contract for that investigation in July, hiring Strata Architecture to conduct what the city describes as a non-destructive investigation and disassembly of one column. Strata wasn't a new name to the project. The firm had already completed the fountain restoration at the same park, so the city was drawing on a contractor who already knew this specific piece of ground.
The Failure You Can't See From the Street
The marble itself isn't really the story. Mission Hills' own conservator flagged the real issue in a year-end 2025 report, noting changes in the columns' condition and raising concern specifically about base integrity. That concern went to the Park Board in April 2026, which is what set the investigation in motion.
When Strata completed a preliminary assessment in June, the diagnosis wasn't stone fatigue. It was water. The firm traced the deterioration to long-term moisture infiltration behind the retaining wall system, combined with drainage that wasn't handling that moisture and decades of ordinary freeze-thaw cycling working on the structure underneath.
That's worth sitting with for a second. From the sidewalk, the columns still look like columns. The part that actually failed is the part nobody sees: the wall and drainage system behind the marble, not the marble itself. A landmark can look structurally sound and be quietly compromised at the base, which is exactly why the city needed to pull one apart rather than just repaint or reseal what's visible.
Timed Around a Dinner Party, Not Around Convenience
The scheduling detail says something about how this city operates. Assistant City Administrator Meghan Woolbright told the council that mobilization for the project began September 1, with the column removal deliberately set for September 15, four days before the city's invitation-only Diner à Verona event on September 19. That gap wasn't an accident. It was a weather buffer, built in specifically so the dinner could go on with the remaining seven columns still standing as its backdrop. The city also planned to limit heavy equipment use on the site during the dinner itself.
By all accounts the sequencing worked. The dinner proceeded on September 19 as planned, columns intact, ahead of the deeper reconstruction still to come.
The one lasting restriction from the project so far is smaller than it might sound: starting September 1, the park has been off-limits for photography permits. It's still a public park. The columns are just no longer available as a backdrop for the portrait sessions and engagement photos that have used them for years, at least until the work is finished.
What's Actually Next
The September disassembly was diagnostic, not the fix itself. Based on what the investigation turns up, the city plans to spend the winter designing a fuller rehabilitation, one that's expected to address:
- Drainage around the retaining wall system
- Waterproofing behind the columns
- Structural stability of the column bases
- Selective reconstruction where needed, aimed at preserving the columns' historic character rather than replacing them wholesale
The target is spring 2027 construction. It will be the first major work on the columns since a 1986 restoration project, which means whatever gets built this time is meant to hold for decades, not years.
The Same Story Is Playing Out Underground
The columns aren't the only piece of Mission Hills' original infrastructure hitting the end of its service life at the same time. The city has spent 2026 running what City Administrator Jennifer Lee has called the largest stormwater project in its recent history, a roughly 4,200-linear-foot pipe replacement, about three quarters of a mile, running through Belinder Avenue, portions of 69th Street, and 70th Terrace.
The reasoning is almost identical to the Verona Columns story. The existing system is 60 to 70 years old, built for rainfall assumptions that were last updated around 2016. City engineers now say updated rainfall data shows storms coming more frequently than those older models accounted for, which is why the pipe is being upsized rather than simply patched. The drainage area it serves stretches across the Country Club neighborhood and connects through 63rd Street, Belinder, and Tomahawk, so this isn't a single-block fix.
The project hasn't been cheap or entirely predictable. Bids came in higher than the city anticipated, which forced staff to trim the scope, deferring a lower-priority segment on 68th Street east of Belinder to a future capital cycle. The revised project still runs to roughly $4.7 million, funded through a mix of sources that includes the Special Highway Fund and a reallocation of about $140,000 in previously encumbered funds tied to an old church-related allocation.
On the ground, that's meant a steady sequence of closures most of the year: new curbs on the east side of Belinder between Tomahawk and 69th Street in July, the west side in early August, and mill-and-overlay paving on Belinder between 65th and 69th Street starting August 17. The city has built in a contingency for finishing in early 2027 if weather or scope changes push the timeline.
Even the neighborhood's ponds are getting the same treatment. The council also approved a contract with Water Resources Solutions to design, bid, and oversee construction for dredging Eisenhower Pond, the next phase of a master plan the council already adopted, coming in at a lower cost than the original consultant's estimate. Marble columns, buried stormwater pipe, a neighborhood pond: three different pieces of Mission Hills' original build-out, all getting attention in the same twelve months.
What's Left on the Calendar This Fall
With Diner à Verona behind it, the next fixed point on the city's public calendar is Fall Fest on October 17. It's a smaller, low-key gathering by design, in keeping with a city that tends to favor resident-driven traditions over large-scale festivals. If the Belinder mill-and-overlay work wraps on schedule, this fall should also be the first stretch in months where the road isn't a active work zone during a major event weekend.
None of this changes the character of the neighborhood. It does explain why a hundred-year-old landmark has scaffolding around it right now, and why a normal-looking residential street has been torn up for a stormwater pipe most residents will never see once it's buried again. Both are the same kind of project: quiet, deferred maintenance on infrastructure that was built to last a long time and is now, on its own schedule, asking for attention.
If you're the kind of homeowner who wants to understand how a city like this maintains what it's built, rather than just enjoying the result, Shawnna Murrell is a good person to talk to about what that says for property values and long-term ownership in Mission Hills.
