Return of the Main Street Square fountains

If you've missed the fountains at Main Street Square, which have been turned off since a hard freeze six weeks ago screwed up a seal between two pipes, there's good news: The fountains are back. We'll give you a few minutes to celebrate.

Honestly — and Houstonist goes past Main Street Square pretty frequently — we hadn't even realized anything was wrong. It's been windy the last few weeks, so we figured the fountains were turned off because of that. But no: What really happened was that a seal in the fountains' water-recycling system failed in mid-January, probably because the cold weather caused a pipe to contract enough that the seal slipped loose. That resulted in the room where the fountains' monitoring and electronic equipment is located getting flooded, which in turn meant $75,000 in repairs were needed to bring the fountains back online. So, $75,000 and six weeks later, we once again have 40-foot jets of water arcing gracefully over the MetroRail tracks in the center of downtown.

It's nice and all, but we're still waiting for Main Street Square to become the real center of downtown, like everyone said it would. When City Council voted to create the square by closing the 1000 block of Main Street to vehicular traffic five years ago, they did so with the intention of creating a great public space — and now we have some cool fountains, interesting pavement and a Corner Bakery. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but we'd hardly call it Times Square. Still, it might happen: If Houston Pavilions is a hit, the hideous One City Centre parking garage gets replaced with something pedestrian-friendly and someone gets that weird water projection screen thing working, the square could be a great place. We won't hold our breath.