Eye in the Sky

Horgan camera to keep watch over downtown construction

Anyone looking to vandalize the construction on the new Clark Street bridge might want to think again.

Horgan Sales and Service has installed a security camera that will watch the site 24 hours a day from a 55-foot tall tower on the top of Horgan's downtown building.

The “Always There Cam” will record the construction, as well as broadcast a live video feed on the company's Web site at www.horgansales.com.

“It's technology we work with all the time, so why not utilize it in a creative way?” Mike Horgan said.

The Web site has been up for about a month and the company has been looking for ways to utilize it.

“It will be a permanent part of our Web site, but we wanted to kick it off with a community project,” Horgan said.

The company hopes the project will draw attention to the Web site, as well as allow people outside of Stevens Point to check up on the progress of construction.

“There is a lot of interest in the bridge project in central Wisconsin,” Horgan said.

The tower, which served a paging system the company no longer uses, will allow the camera to see above the trees and other buildings around the bridge, Horgan said.

The camera was installed Wednesday with the help of the Stevens Point Fire Department and the video feed to the site should be running sometime this weekend, Horgan said.

"Certainly by Monday when the bridge goes down,” he said.

The company is looking for other projects in the community,” Horgan said.

“We're working on doing something similar with the statue in front of the fire station,” he said.

The boy with the leaking boot statue has been vandalized several times in the past, most recently when it had its head torn off and stolen by a University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point student in June 1998. The statue is now being repaired.

(By Jonathan Sweet, Stevens Point Journal -- March 18, 2000)

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