THE future for Warrnambool's silver ball, which towers over the old Fletcher Jones site, looks bleak.
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Although a new campaign is under way on social media to try to save the ball, no one is entirely sure how this can be done because the FJs site is horribly tangled up in a mess of bureaucracy and legal red tape. The city council says it is not responsible as it does not own the Heritage-listed site, the former owner's business is in receivership so he claims he is no longer responsible and the receivers are not returning calls.
In the meantime the FJs site, and the iconic ball in particular, is slowly falling into disrepair and becoming an eyesore.
The ball is for many people in Warrnambool a much-loved, historical (it was built in 1967) edifice that should be upgraded and kept as a giant piece of public art.
The Facebook campaign called Save The Silver Ball has already attracted almost 500 supporters but because the legal and planning issues present such a minefield there do not appear to be any practical or realistic solutions, so for now it is a campaign built solely on emotion.
Unless a solution to this impasse can be found sooner rather than later, the silver ball will continue to deteriorate to the point where there is no alternative other than to tear it down for safety reasons.
Unless a philanthropic white knight comes riding in with a workable plan to rescue the ball from oblivion, we may have to face the fact that after almost half a century dominating the city's skyline it will have to go.