With an overall goal of bringing people to Monmouth and showcasing that the residents take pride in the community, Market Alley Wines Owner Sarah Walters proposed an idea to the Monmouth City Council to implement during the Downtown Beautification:
“Well, I had this idea, quite a while ago actually, when they got the grant, and I thought ‘wow this would be kind of fun.’ I am a big cheerleader for our town. I love Monmouth. So, I kind of had this idea, if you go around the country, each town kind of has something that makes them special. You can travel to the biggest ear of corn, or all those different things and I thought wouldn’t it be fun if we could have a giant maple leaf in our center square. We are the Maple City. If you look around our town, even when you come to our town, the welcome sign has a maple leaf, many businesses and organizations use the maple leaf as their logo, so I thought that would be really cool as we are doing this beautification process. So, I started the process and went to City Hall. I met with a local iron worker, Gabe Stevens, he lives in Biggsville. Then I went to several Council meetings to propose my idea and it finally passed. My promise when I created this idea was that I would do the fundraising to make this happen so that the City didn’t have to incur one single penny.”
Walters informs fundraising has begun to reach the $30,000 target to complete the maple leaf sculpture that would replace the fountain in Downtown Monmouth.
