50 ft Target Lava Lamp has arrived in soap lake

By Matthew Weaver
Columbia Basin Herald staff writer

SOAP LAKE: Where does a 50-foot mechanical lava lamp fit within a small town?
Anywhere it wants to. Or, to be more precise, anywhere the community wants it to go.

The Soap Lake city council unanimously agreed at their meeting Wednesday (November 17, 2004) to contract with Target Corporation to facilitate moving the lamp sign structure, which currently stands on the corner of a building in Times Square in New York City, to Soap Lake.

"At the present time, it is a matter of waiting for it to be removed from (its) position in Time Square and then, to our understanding, placed on trucks and shipped to Soap Lake," Mayor Wayne Hovde said. Brent Blake, president and CEO of the Soap Lake Giant Lava Lamp Project, Inc., said that the city council decision helped his corporation overcome
several challenges.

"This just ensured everything is going to work much more smoothly," Blake said. "It's wonderful assistance to our Soap Lake Giant Lava Lamp Corporation. It's a way to facilitate (the move). It solved all kinds of problems and it's a wonderful thing for the community." Blake said that the corporation is waiting Target's final signing and returning of the contract, cautioning that nothing is set in stone until that is obtained.

(NOTE: City of Soap Lake received signed final contract from Target Monday, December 6, 2004!)

"The plan for Target is to remove the lamp off of the building in Times Square sometime in December or early January and then my guess is it would be a week or less for it to arrive in Soap Lake," Blake said. He said an exact location has to be determined for the lamp to be removed from a number of trucks, stored and examined while funds are raised to get it erected in the spring, the community and corporation's goal.

"There's a lot of work to be done from this point on to have the community raise the funds to have it rebuilt and erected within the city in an area that will be selected by the community members, and the council has to approve that location, "Hovde said," I’m excited about it, I think it's going to be a very good boost, something that will draw a lot of attention and a lot of visitors."

And what of Blake's original goal, to erect the world's largest fully functional lava lamp in Soap Lake? "The point about this is, it's a couple feet shorter than what we really wanted, but it's pretty big, pretty substantial and pretty exciting, We are grateful for Target’s assistance in gaining a Giant Lava Lamp for Soap Lake," he said. "So, it certainly would suffice until we can, if ever, figure out how to raise money to build the real thing. Soap Lake in effect gets a giant lava lamp, and that was the original goal and it's now going to happen. The dream's been realized."

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