Lake Loretta funds dry

Supporters of Albany's Lake Loretta work for funding with a yard sale.

Susan McCord
The Albany Herald

Privately owned but publicly used, 25-acre Lake Loretta has long been a popular place in Albany for boating, fishing, jogging, walking, and even just hanging out.

The owners of Lake Loretta, however, continue to be saddled with the cost of maintaining the lake — keeping vegetation and algae growth down, water levels up and the lake’s shores and walking trail free of trash and other debris.

While use of the lake continues, the 400 or so nearby households eligible to join the Lake Park Recreation Club, which owns and supports the lake, aren’t as interested in caring for it as in the past, said an Albany man who has taken a lead in reviving interest in Lake Loretta.

“Back in the day, from those 400 households we had 350 members at $50 apiece,” said Sam Shugart, whose Edgewater Drive home fronts Lake Loretta. “The people who were pushing this thing have sort of dwindled out.”

The Lake Park Recreation Club has fought over the years to stop widening of Dawson Road and to control late-night parking and loitering, according to Herald reports from the 1980s and 1990s.

Recently, however, when the pump that draws fresh water from deep in the ground into Lake Loretta went out, club directors found they didn’t have the cash to replace it, Shugart said.

An urgent letter sent to residents found the funds needed for the pump, saving the population of fish that live in the lake’s 8-to-9-foot depths. But the cost left club finances sorely depleted, Shugart said.

Since the lake and nearby Lake Cornelia, a dry lake, were deeded to Lake Park Recreation Club in 1959, the club has relied on membership dues to maintain Lake Loretta and even stock it with fish.

Today, about 440 nearby homeowners remain eligible for discounted memberships of $50 each, and nonresidents can buy annual memberships for $100, Shugart said.

Walkers, some 150 each day, walk for free, and memberships aren’t selling fast enough to fund the $10,000-12,000 or more necessary to keep the lake up.

A utility bill alone, to power the pump to refill about 2 feet of water lost when the pump broke during the height of drought conditions, runs more than $1,000 each month, he said.

Shugart and other supporters, including Kevin and Suzanne Hogencamp, who reside in lakefront homes, want to renew interest in and gain community support for the lake.

Few alternatives exist: selling the lake to a private owner, or perhaps selling walking memberships and enlisting city police to enforce them, Shugart said.

Instead, the club is making a further push for funds with a “ginormous” yard sale Saturday beginning at 7 a.m. in the parking lot of Covenant Presbyterian Church.

Yard sale organizer Suzanne Hogencamp said donations for the sale have been pouring in but more still are needed.

Donors can bring items to the church from 5 p.m.-8 p.m. Thursday and 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Friday.
For more information, call (229) 407-0972.

(Staff writer Barbara Rivera Holmes contributed to this report.)