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Big wheel stops turning By BILL KETTLER A Ferris wheel's a wonderful thing, unless it belongs to your neighbor. Big Eli, Pam Anderson's 36-foot Ferris wheel at Redrock Pizza, brought delight to Medford kids and parents. Eli brought sleepless nights to Teresa Erceg, who sleeps a stone's throw away. Anderson talks about happy children who came to the west Medford restaurant to ride Big Eli on their birthday. "I get three or four calls a week" about birthday parties. Even couples like to ride it, she says. "Sometimes when it was really stressful in the restaurant I'd come outside to watch the Ferris wheel. Everybody's happy on the Ferris wheel." Erceg wasn't happy. She remembers noisy drunks on the wheel in the wee hours. "The first time I called to complain it was 3:30 (in the morning)," she says. There were problems at other hours, too, she says. "The people were rude. They'd yell at me. There was always yelling and screaming. "I have to get up at 4 in the morning to go to work. I go to bed at 7:30 or 8." A fence and a line of tall trees separate Erceg's house from the restaurant, but that wasn't enough. She and Anderson have been at odds over Big Eli since the restaurant opened in March 1999. "She just seems like she's an angry woman," Anderson says. "We definitely can't work with her." Erceg says Anderson told her to "buy ear plugs or get another job or move if I didn't like it." Erceg complained to city officials about Big Eli's noise and lights. City officials went out to investigate but found the noise and light fell within acceptable limits. A Ferris wheel in a commercial zone doesn't violate any city codes, says planner Jim Maize. She wasn't the only one who thought Big Eli was a big pain. A woman who lives a few doors farther away hired an attorney to look for some way to stop the noise. Erceg hired an attorney, too. He discovered the Ferris wheel stood too close to the restaurant's property line. City officials told Anderson the wheel would have to be moved to comply with setback requirements if she wanted to keep it. Moving the wheel a few feet would eliminate some of Anderson's parking spaces. The city code requires her to make up for the lost spaces. On-street parking spaces don't count. She's decided to take the wheel down and end the struggle rather than try to negotiate a lease for parking spaces with neighboring businesses. "She just wore me down over the past three years," Anderson says. "I'm a worrier. I've lost enough sleep over this." "I put up with this seven days a week," Erceg says. "The longer it went on, the angrier I got. I don't want to sue them. I just want it out of my neighborhood. "I feel sorry for the kids who rode it, but they don't understand." Anderson has shut down the Ferris wheel, and city officials have told her it must be removed by Oct. 1. She plans to sell it. The asking price is $19,500 for a buyer who will dismantle it; $22,500 if Anderson has to take it down. "I'm going to see what I can do on eBay," she says. "It would be great if someone local bought it and put it in a park." Some kids have started a petition to try to keep the Ferris wheel. "There's nothing that could replace a year-round Ferris wheel," says Clemmie von Radics, who celebrated her eighth birthday on Big Eli. Clemmie, who's 9 now, says it won't be the same when her family goes to the Redrock for dinner. "They'd try to stop everyone at the top so you could get a view," she says. "You could see the mountains." Reach reporter Bill Kettler at 776-4492, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.