Last May Fruitland Park allocated $100,655 to BESH Engineering of Tavares to build a 16-inch water main from Berckman Street—the city’s main drag—past City Hall to the Villages of Fruitland Park.
The Villages is reimbursing the money, along with $196,670 to improve the city’s wells and water plant behind the Library with new pumps and a 500,000-gallon inground water storage tank, which has been completed.
The pipeline will supply up to 195,000 gallons per day to the Villages of Fruitland Park.
Berckman Street was named for Augustus Berckmann, the Belgian immigrant who created Fruitland Nurseries in Atlanta—now home of the Augusta National Country Club and the Masters Golf Tournament.
In the 1880s, when Fruitland Park was platted, Berckman Street was a wide sandy trail from Fountain Lake west across the Leesburg Road (today’s Dixie Avenue) to Lake Griffin, where growers could ship their fruits and vegetables up the Ocklawaha River to Jacksonville and the Eastern Seaboard.
At the rate of about two blocks a day, pipeline construction should wrap it up before the end of this month.
Both sides of Berckman Street will then be repaved.