A painstaking lighthouse project

Port Washington’s most famous landmark has taken on an eerie appearance, clad in scaffolding that’s hidden under a black tarp-like covering, causing Mayor Ted Neitzke to refer to it as the “Sith Lord lighthouse” Tuesday.

The lighthouse, which was built in 1935 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is undergoing a $2.6 million renovation designed to restore its rusty looking appearance to pristine white and repair its portholes and the concrete arched base on which the metal structure stands.

The work, said Neitzke, who toured the lighthouse Monday, is “putzy.”

“It’s going to take a long time,” he said. “They are scraping the lighthouse clean, and it’s literally inch by inch. It is being scraped by hand to ensure the bio-safe chemicals (in the paint stripper) are contained.”

A five-person crew from TMI Coatings is cleaning the lighthouse inside and out, from top to bottom, Neitzke said.

The paint on the exterior of the lighthouse is coming off more easily than that on the inside, where crews are experimenting with different paint removers to try and find one that is effective, Public Works Director Rob Vanden Noven said.

“None have been successful so far,” Vanden Noven said. “They’re having trouble removing it down to the base.”

While the stripper may not be as effective as hoped, Neitzke said, it is powerful. He said he got some on his pants and “when I got home there was a little area burned out on my knee.”

The exterior of the lighthouse currently is tri-colored, Neitzke said. There’s the white top coat, underneath it is the orange lead-based primer coat while the raw steel that’s stripped of paint is black.

“The steel’s in incredible shape,” Neitzke said. “There’s no major repairs needed.”

The surface rust can be ground off, he said.

But what’s amazing, Neitzke said, is that as the layers of paint are stripped, remnants of the graffiti that had been painted over through the years are revealed.

The project remains on schedule, he said, adding it “is going about as good as it can.”

But, Neitzke said, the city needs to come up with a plan to deal with what he called the real issue — marina lichen, an orange-yellow composite organism that’s covering the surface of the lighthouse and giving it a dirty appearance.

The same lichen can be seen along the lakeshore, Neitzke noted.

“That is what the lighthouse is actually covered in,” he said. “We have to find a solution to that, otherwise it’s going to turn the ligthhouse to brown again pretty quickly. Power washing does not do much to it.

“My worry is we spend the (funds) getting the lighthouse ready for its 90th birthday (this year) and by her 92nd, it’s covered in that again.”

The bulk of the cost of the project is being paid by a $2.2 million Transportation Alternative Program grant for historic building preservation from the Wisconsin Department of Transportation.

Vanden Noven noted that in addition to the painting, the lighthouse project includes replacing the glass in the porthole windows, some of which are broken, and repairing some surface deterioration on the arched base of the lighthouse.

The work, which has closed the far east end of the breakwater, is expected to be completed in October.

On Tuesday, the Common Council approved a lease agreement with the Army Corps of Engineers that combines three existing agreements into one document and in the process removes language requiring the Army Corps of Engineers Safety Manual be used by the contractor — a  move that Vanden Noven said is saving the city an estimated $200,000 on the lighthouse project.

The new 25-year lease covers not just the breakwater directly underneath the lighthouse but also an agreement allowing the safety ladders and life rings that expired in 2023 and a lease regarding the rubblemound near Rotary Park, which expired in 2022.