Melodious chimes from Naperville’s Millennium Carillon will be a harbinger of spring this year with the completion of the Moser Tower repair project.
The 72 bells have been silent for two years while the city embarked on a restoration project that took a year longer than expected due to problems with moving cell transmitters, dealing with supply chain issues and other construction snags.
Work on the tower is now “substantially complete,” said Bill Novack, director of Transportation, Engineering and Development for the city.
“Our engineer will be visiting the site soon to walk through all of the improvements and create a final punch list for the contractor to address,” he said.
Naperville Park District officials are waiting for the city’s final sign off on the project and warmer temperatures before they reopen the Moser Tower visitors center, which allows people to view the bells inside and go to the top for a bird’s-eye view of the city.
The original restoration cost was $2.09 million, but the city had to tap into a portion of its 3% contingency budget when the prices escalated to $2.15 million.
The reopening of the tower is good news for city carillonneur Tim Sleep, who is beginning to line musicians for summer carillon concerts.
Although he plays the organ at his church, Sleep said the carillon is slightly different. To keep up his carillon skills, he practices at home on a keyboard that matches the one that’s in the tower.
“It’s not exactly the same as playing the real bells, but at least it allows you to practice,” Sleep said.
Physicality is needed to play the instrument.
The clapper that rings the bells weighs 200 pounds, he said, “so there’s a little heft you have to have to be able to do that.”
On top of that, a carillonneur needs endurance to climb steps to the top of the tower where the keyboard is located.
Once the city gives the official go-ahead, Sleep anticipates he and other carillonneurs can start practicing in March or April before the summer concert season is in full swing.
Ideally, a carillonneur would practice a couple times a week, he said.
“The problem is, we have to respect the neighborhood. We can’t just go up there and pound away,” Sleep said. “We really need to respect the soundscape of our location.”
He expects carillonneurs will have only one practice session in an afternoon.
Before the pandemic, Sleep said they’d practice during the week because most people worked away from home.
Now more people are working from home.
“They don’t need the carillon going off in the background while they’re trying to work,” Sleep said.
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Because the carillon is such a public instrument, carillonneurs must be sensitive to the kind of music that is playing and that it be diverse, he said.
“Unlike almost any other instrument, people that listen to the carillon — the bulk of our audience — don’t have a choice,” said. “Because of the Riverwalk and just the downtown area, there’s a lot of serendipitous listening that goes on. We have to be careful of that, and we have to honor it. Not everybody wants to hear it all the time.”
Millennium Carillon and 160-foot tall Moser Tower sit at the bottom of Rotary Hill. It’s been a fixture on Naperville’s downtown landscape since being dedicated in 2000, with the tower and the adjacent visitor center opening seven years later.
The structure has been a source of discord at times.
The project was supposed to be a gift to the community to commemorate the dawn of the new millennium until the economy slowed along with donations. The Naperville City Council funded the completion of the tower construction and the loan.
In the process, plans to encase the bottom of the tower in protective glass were abandoned, which proved costly when a 2017 assessment found the tower’s concrete beginning to crack and steel supports eroding.
After gathering public input, the Naperville Riverwalk Commission recommended the tower be repaired.
StruxC-MC was hired by the city in 2021 to repair the crumbling concrete, address and paint the corroding steel, and replace the staircase inside the tower. The work was supposed to be finished that year.
But the construction timetable was derailed, initially by delays in cellphone carriers moving transmitters outside the scaffolding. In November 2021, the contractor was granted 190 additional days to complete the work.
In June 2022, 140 more days were approved due to supply chain delays with needed precast materials.
The majority of the work was completed in fall 2022, with minor touches planned in the coming months.