News

New Main Street fountain ‘up and running’ in time for America 250 celebration

Workers from Medallion Pools in Asheville worked in overbearing heat this week to finish a new downtown fountain in time for July 4 celebrations on Main Street.

By Kevyn Carter-Long, Published: July 3, 2026

Despite the overbearing heat this week, Hendersonville met its deadline for completing a new downtown fountain in time for the town’s America 250 Celebration on Saturday, July 4.

“It’s up and running,” Hendersonville Mayor Pro Tem Jennifer Hensley said on Friday of the new fountain on Main Street. “I think it looks great.”
A team of four from Medallion Pools in Asheville worked six 10-hour days beginning last Monday to meet the Fourth of July deadline from the city. The pool company, which had hoped to finish the project on Main Street by Friday, beat its own expectations and completed work on the fountain on Thursday.
Hensley said she thought a few tweaks on the fountain might be needed here and there. But she said the pool team did a good job finishing the project on time for the Independence Day events downtown.
“We’re celebrating,” she said. “They came through on time.”
As temperatures soared into the 90s on Wednesday, the pool team conducted trial-and-error tests on the fountain’s water pressure and height of the water spouts to match the planned spiral design.
Finishing touches on Thursday included placing river rock and lights on the floor of the fountain.
By Thursday night, all construction barriers were moved away from the fountain, and people walking along the sidewalk in front of the spiral jets could see the water spouts illuminated as they passed by.
Hendersonville’s Building Maintenance Supervisor Ross Henderson, who came to check on the fountain’s progress on Wednesday, said there are plans for colored lights to be added after the 250 celebration for the evening display of the new downtown fountain.
“I’m excited about it,” Henderson said. “The old fountain had kinda run its course.”
Hendersonville City Council voted unanimously in May to authorize city engineers and a public works crew to remove the old Mountain Memories fountain – a copper depiction of the Blue Ridge mountains rising above the French Broad River Valley that some mocked as the “mountain molar.”
Medallion, which installed the original mechanical system, was chosen to also install the new fountain. The company “developed concepts to modernize the fountain while maintaining the integrity of the existing brick structure,” according to a resolution the council adopted in May.
Henderson said the cost of the new fountain will not come close to the $180,000 it cost for the original fountain. He attributed the majority of the cost difference to the fact that the original fountain was a project that started completely from scratch in 2013, while the work this year only involved a new fountain installation and new underground pump next to it.
City engineers in May estimated that the city and Medallion could complete the job for $65,000 or less.
The contract with the pool contractor included cleaning the existing brick structure and installing new water jets and lighting “to improve (the) functionality, safety and visual appeal” of the urban artwork on the First Citizens Plaza on North Main.