ASHLAND — Ashland County commissioners on Thursday hired a local company to finish up the Corner Park project that has dragged on for four years.
The Sarver Paving Co. said it will do the work for $402,319. The work will begin “A.S.A.P.,” said commissioner Jim Justice, or when the weather cooperates.
The money for the third and final phase of the project will come from the county’s capital improvements budget and will, when finished, serve as another “showplace” in Ashland, Justice said.
“We’re excited to get this going,” Justice said. “This has been going since pandemic times, but in the overall scheme, there has been a lot more added, a lot of features — it’s going to be one of those showplaces in town, we believe.”
Commissioner Mike Welch agreed, calling the park a “gem” of Ashland County.
The project, once finished, will feature sidewalks, a new crosswalk across Main Street to the county administrative building, a new entrance off Broad Street, new lighting and a newly configured parking lot.
The new lot will result in fewer parking spaces, according to the schematics drawn by Richland Engineering Limited, the company hired to engineer the project.
Currently, there are around 70 spots, according to a Google Maps image of the lot. The new lot will have 51 regular spots, with four designated as handicap accessible, according to Dennis Harris, the county’s maintenance superintendent.
Planning for the project began in 2019, halted in 2020 and began again in late 2021 when commissioners spent $57,628 on materials needed to build a sidewalk, curbs and lighting. Most of that money, $48,000, came from an Ohio Department of Natural Resources grant and local donations.
It was then put on hold again as commissioners figured out a way to acquire a vacant house on the corner of West Main and Broad streets, a house owned by Commissioner Denny Bittle.
Engineering firms could not adequately plan for the project because of limited access to that property. Bittle ended up selling the house to the Ashland County Land Reutilization Corporation, also known as the Ashland land bank, for $46,000, the price he paid for it in 2016.
Ashland County officials criticized that transaction as “problematic” and a potential “ethical violation” because of the means by which the land bank voted to acquire the property.
Nevertheless, the vacant house was demolished for $16,367, using land bank funding. The county finally gained access to the property in August 2022, when the county authorized a quit-claim deed for the property.
