What will the City of Webster do with 20,000 square foot property along busy Interstate-45? According to a proposal announced early February 2014, the city plans to develop the 5-acre tract of land, located on the northwest side of I-45 and NASA Parkway, into Apollo Park.
There are many more ideas to develop, but a major part of the visitor’s center has already been approved. David Adickes, 88-year old Houston sculpture and painter, has been chosen to create the ‘centerpiece’ of the park -- a 100-foot tall Astronaut statue. The statue will be surrounded by office space and a visitor’s center.
The Houston Chronicle reported in their July 22, 2015 article: “If the statue of the astronaut goes to plan, it would be taller than the Sam Houston statue that Adickes created for Huntsville. Sam is 67 feet tall with a 10-foot pedestal below him. Adickes' Angleton-area statue of one of Texas' other founding fathers, Stephen F. Austin, is 60 feet tall and has a 12-foot pedestal. “It’s a multimillion-dollar project for sure,” said Adickes.”
The statue has already gone through a change in design. Originally, Adickes was going to create an astronaut wearing a backpack and its arm raised to its head in a salute. Now the astronaut’s suit will be ‘generic’, under one arm, it will be holding a flight helmet and the other arm will be raised, as if waving. The construction technique, according to Adickes, will be the same used to create the Sam Houston statue in Huntsville and the Stephen F. Austin statue in Angleton. The steel-skeleton with concrete covering 10-foot pieces will be hoisted into place by two cranes. There has been no date announced as to when the groundbreaking will take place, nor the final approval of the statue.
This project will definitely become a new visitor’s point of destination for the space city, after all The City of Webster’s motto is Gateway to the Future.
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