A city built a big chicken. Its ballooning cost had people crying fowl.

Georgia city votes not to finish massive chicken topiary - The Washington Post

Jim Puckett’s idea to bring more people to his city was to build a 62-foot topiary in the shape of a chicken.

“When you go downtown and stop at a red light, you’re very likely to have a family of wild Burmese chicken cross in front of you,” Puckett told WALB in 2019.

Work began on the steel chicken that year, but by 2021, it was still sitting unfinished on the side of one of Fitzgerald’s main roads.

Its incomplete state led to persistent questions from residents about the bird’s future. But as costs doubled and a new mayor was elected in 2021, Puckett’s idea languished. The Fitzgerald City Council on Monday voted to curb plans to finish “the Big Chicken,” as residents call it.

“There’s not a lot of neutrality,” Fitzgerald’s new mayor, Jason Holt, told The Washington Post. “Everybody has an opinion.”

Work on the Big Chicken began in 2019, with the City Council and Joe Kyte, a sculptor known as “Topiary Joe,” both on board. The project, which was part of the city’s tourism plan, received $150,000 of local government funding.

Inside the new chicken topiary, Puckett envisioned an Airbnb-style space that visitors could stay in, an oasis nestled within the plants that would soon cover the larger-than-life animal.

The vision for the chicken was that it would attract tourists in the same way as the “ Big Bat” outside Kentucky’s Louisville Slugger Museum or the display of world’s largest things in Casey, Ill. Fitzgerald’s 62-foot chicken topiary was also set to rival the other “Big Chicken,” in Marietta, Ga., a longtime landmark that stands 56 feet tall.

By the spring of 2021, the steel chicken had been built, following delays on materials during the pandemic.

The city had spent around $300,000 on the topiary frame by then, Holt said, and it was still unfinished. Greenery had yet to cover the steel shape.

At the time, the race for Fitzgerald’s next mayor had begun. With the election looming, residents’ doubts were rising about the avian project, which they couldn’t miss when passing by Harveys Supermarket.

“This thing just was not being finished,” Holt said. “And it just became this albatross.”

When Holt, who previously served on the City Council for 12 years, decided to run for mayor, he didn’t incorporate the Big Chicken in his platform. But it became a part of it anyway.

At every town hall or community forum he went to, someone always posed “a chicken question,” he said. The community was desperate to know the destiny of the chicken that towered over the town.

Though he tried to steer away at first, Holt soon made it clear to Fitzgerald residents that, if elected, he didn’t want the fate of the Big Chicken to rest in his hands alone.

Holt wanted community input, he told residents. While some loved the topiary idea, most were not impressed, thinking it was a waste of time and money. Those who were not pleased with the chicken favored Holt.

After he won the election in November 2021, Holt put together a committee of city employees, local artists, business owners and other community members to research how best to move forward.

The “chicken committee” examined multiple options. The city could finish the topiary as originally planned. Or it could cover the Big Chicken in sheet metal or fiber mesh. Another choice was to tear down the bird altogether.

Ultimately, the Fitzgerald City Council settled on keeping the steel chicken. But the plan is to alter it, rather than finish the topiary.

The inside of the chicken — vestiges of the living quarters that had been imagined for it — will be painted red to match the rest of the rebar. The city is aiming to build a fence and plant billowy pampas grass around the chicken, hoping to create the illusion of the bird sitting in a nest.

And eventually, Holt said, park benches or picnic tables will be installed under the Big Chicken for residents to gather, likely alongside the life-size Burmese chickens that wander about.

For now, though, the mayor has a separate declaration.

“I think we’re done with oversized animals,” he said.