The university is holding a public meeting on Monday about plans to remove the 220-foot Sky Spiral, an abandoned attraction at the former Aquarena Springs amusement park.

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SUBMITTED REPORT

Texas State University will hold a public meeting Monday, May 7, to discuss plans to remove the Sky Spiral and Sky Tram, former theme park attractions at the Aquarena Center on the university campus.

The meeting will take place at 6 p.m. in the conference room at the Texas Rivers Center on the Aquarena property. Topics for discussion will include the process to remove the Sky Spiral tower and the tram from the hillside west of Spring Lake, as well as the timeline for the project.

Removal of the tower and tram is part of the Spring Lake Aquatic Restoration Project. Texas State, in partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, has contracted with the Bristol Corporation to remove the structures.

For information about the tower removal, contact Andrew Sansom, the Texas Rivers Center director, at 512-245-9201 or as22@txstate.edu.

The Aquarena Sky Spiral was purchased by the then-owners of the Aquarena Springs theme park from Lion Country Safari of Atlanta in 1978. It was transported to San Marcos and erected at Aquarena and opened to the public as an observation tower in 1979.

It was taken out of service in 1996. The university purchased the former theme park in 1994 and has converted it to an education and research center.

A Texas State student died in June last year when he fell from the tower. John Patrick Fox, 26, of Austin and a friend climbed the spiral early one Sunday morning and he plummeted to his death while descending a ladder to the ground.