Three of the five iron dragonflies the Auburn Arts Commission selected as art for the West Main Street improvement project were up on their steel bamboo stalks for a month.

Meanwhile, dragonflies four and five, designed unlike the others to turn with the wind, awaited installation near the Interurban Trail.

But on Monday of last week city workers took down the three they already had installed. Then on Friday, they put them back again. And city officials say the two the public has not yet seen were to go up Monday.

What’s going on?

According to the city’s Public Works Department, an inspector took a look at how the dragonflies were connected to the foundations and thought there was room for improvement.

“During installation of the dragonflies our inspector thought that the dragonflies weren’t connected to the foundations as well as they could be,” said Leah Dunsdon, manager for the West Main Street project. “We put three of the five dragonflies up, but we held off on the last two by the Interurban trail. And in the process, we have been working out a better way to secure the dragonflies to the foundation.

“… The footings are adequate,” Dunsdon continued, “but how they are connected to the dragonflies wasn’t as sturdy as it could be. The artists said they had installed similar projects in other cities, and they gave a tug, and there was give. We felt it was better in the long term to beef up how they are hooked into the foundation.”

The brightly-colored dragonflies were made by the Spokane-based husband and wife team of Tom Askman and Lea Anne Lake.

The three dragonflies between D and H Streets Northwest are static, with 80-inch-wide wingspans. Because the wings on the turning pieces are up, they are 36 inches across.

In May, city workers are scheduled to sandblast into the sidewalks ghostly images of dragonflies and ants.

Improvements to West Main Street began last year and include an overlay of the street surface, repairs to damaged curbs, gutters and sidewalks, new street lighting and bike lanes.

During the competition to land the $30,000 art contract, Askman and Lake proposed that dragonflies would be nicely emblematic of the future Auburn Environmental Park to the north and a fun introduction to the city.