For about a year, the 14 Wharf Tower bells on Columbia's Lakefront Plaza have been silent.
The bells had pealed on the hour and played "Westminster Chimes" on the quarter-hour for more than 20 years, but few noticed the loss immediately, not even Alton J. Scavo, Rouse Co. general manager for Columbia.
"My offices face the lake, and when the bells are working, you can hear them. But after a while, you take them for granted," he said. "Then one day, I said to myself, 'I don't think I heard them.'"
That realization set in motion several talks with Columbia Association President Maggie J. Brown, which resulted in a plan and pledge to partially restore the nonworking carillon by Columbia's International Day celebration July 27.
"I've missed them," Brown said at the Columbia Council meeting Thursday, during which the plan was revealed. "The bells make you feel good - they perk you up."
Twelve bells were installed in the tower in 1977 as a gift from James W. Rouse on Columbia's 10th anniversary. Two more were added in 1979.
They rang faithfully year after year. But time took its toll and by spring last year, the electrically rung bells had stopped functioning.
"It's just like anything else - there's deterioration," Brown said. "We did patch jobs, repaired this and fixed that, but there comes a point when you say it's really time to do a full restoration."
Brown and her association staff looked into having the bells repaired professionally. They were given an estimate of $65,000 - money they didn't have.
"I didn't even tell the council I was thinking of this," Brown said. "It was a nonissue at that point."
Brown thought she could propose the repair for the association's fiscal year 2004 budget, but then Scavo called about a month ago and wondered what was going on.
Brown told him, then asked whether he would like to share the cost of repairs. They decided full restoration was out of the question - and perhaps unnecessary.
"We said, 'What if we did something to restore them to a more simplistic level?'" Brown said. "We could always go back and do more work later."
And that's what they're going to do. After four weeks of research and a final phone call between Scavo and Brown on Thursday evening, it was decided that, with technological advances, five or six restored bells - at an estimated cost of $24,000 - could sound as good as 14 bells did in the late '70s.
Scavo volunteered up to $10,000 from the Rouse Co. for the bells' repair as an "anniversary present" for Columbia's 35th birthday today. The other $14,000 needed will come from the association's contingency fund as decided by the council members' unanimous vote after Brown proposed the plan Thursday.
Association Vice President Charles "Chick" Rhodehamel will make the arrangements, and work will start as soon as a final deal is reached with IT Verdin, a Cincinnati-based company that specializes in carillon restoration.
"It will be wonderful to have those bells back," said Councilwoman Donna L. Rice of Town Center. "I'm elated."