By Khalida Sarwari
Visitors leaving the Hakone Estate and Gardens may have noticed an alternate exit over the past few weeks. That’s because the stretch of road leading out of the property took a beating in a series of storms that struck Saratoga this past November, city officials said this week.
A gardener at Hakone found the exit driveway in disarray sometime in November, said Saratoga’s director of public works, John Cherbone.
“They found the wall supporting the road had failed,” he explained. “It’s a rock wall that just fell down the slope, and then part of the road failed.”
That in turn caused part of the ground underneath the wall to cave in, along with the pavement.
“Like a house of cards, basically,” said Cherbone.
While nothing of that magnitude has ever occurred at Hakone, the collapse of the wall may not be much of a surprise, given that it was made out of rocks pulled out of a creek and placed there around 100 years ago by the estate’s original occupants, Cherbone said.
A replacement wall is being built, one that will be made out of concrete but designed to look like the original wall.
“We’ll design the wall so that it blends in with the environment and keeps as much of the historic nature as possible,” Cherbone said.
He said it will cost the city about $400,000 to repair the damage. That price tag includes design, testing, inspection and construction. The project is in the preliminary design phase, with construction of a replacement wall expected to begin sometime in late April, once the weather improves.
“We’ve had some drill testing to determine soil conditions for the new wall,” said Cherbone, adding that construction is estimated to take four to five months. There haven’t yet been any long-term closures of the gardens, and construction is not expected to affect operations there, he said.
Since November, visitors have been rerouted through an emergency access gate that leads to Bowman Road, from where they can continue down Oak Street before turning on a side street. The gate is normally reserved for fire apparatus but it is temporarily being used as an exit point, said Cherbone.
Road leading out of Hakone takes a beating from winter storms
