Good things take time

PARADISE – The American Legion Post #129 has recently experienced a stall in rebuilding, however, the little snag should be resolved shortly.

Vice Commander Dave Koepplin assured the post will continue to rebuild, despite rumors stating otherwise.

The Legion is currently waiting on engineer plans from the company they ordered the building from.

“We have to present them to the county and the state for approval before we can move on,” Koepplin said. 

As soon as the plans arrive, the legion plans to hire a general contractor who will oversee the construction from beginning to end. 

This will eliminate some of the Legion’s involvement in the process.

“There won’t be as many people from the Legion involved as we initially thought. That was a general consensus; it’s best that we get someone who absolutely knew what they were doing,” Koepplin said.

The Legion was to hopefully receive the plans sometime this week. Once the plans are finalized, it’s all down hill from there.

“We all feel that once it gets started, it’s not going to take that long to get the building up and get in there,” Koepplin said.

Decisions have been made on all other aspects of the building and the Legion also knows where they want to get some of their kitchen equipment. Koepplin said there were some community members that were willing to donate in an effort to help.

“We’re headed in the right direction, just not as fast as we had hoped,” Koepplin said with a laugh. 

The general consensus of the group is that the time frame is not as important as doing the project right the first time. 

“This is not a hurry up project. We have one shot to make this right and we want to do it right,” Koepplin said. “If it takes a little more time to accomplish that, that’s fine.”

 One thing Koepplin still hopes to get out of the community, is more participation. 

The Legion holds their meetings on the second Wednesday of the month at the VFW at 7 p.m. Although the post has some 70 members, often times only ten or so show up at a time. 

The hope is that once the building site shows some progress, more people will get involved. 

“I’d rather see 20 guys at the meeting giving their two cents right now instead of six months down the road once the building is open,” Koepplin said. 

If the group works together, they can ensure that all the Legion members are satisfied with the new building and that is what Koepplin hopes to accomplish. 

The Legion post was burnt to the ground in the early morning hours of July 31, 2013. Since then, the members have been working tirelessly to get a new building in place.