MILL CREEK METROPARKS Board awards contract for bike path connector

The asphalt path will be installed this summer.
CANFIELD -- The Mill Creek MetroParks board awarded a $123,836 contract Monday to Dot Construction of Canfield to build a hike and bike trail connector between East and West Newport drives, just north of Shields Road in Mill Creek Park.
Dot was the lowest of three bidders for the federally funded summer project, which will create an 850-foot-long, 10-foot-wide asphalt pedestrian and bicycle path and bridge over Mill Creek.
Park officials have said the path, for which trees have already been cut down, will improve safety by keeping hikers, joggers and bicyclists out of the heavy traffic on Shields Road and Sheban Drive.
Lucky Kaiser of Sheban Drive again unsuccessfully urged commissioners to abandon the connector in favor of a bicycle path along Sheban Drive.
In other action, commissioners:
URenewed for five years a $1-a-year agreement under which the park board leases about 40 acres of Consumers Ohio Water Service land adjacent to Yellow Creek Park. The leased land is along Yellow Creek in Struthers between Wetmore Drive and Hamilton Lake dam. The ruins of the Hopewell blast furnace, the bicentennial of which is being observed this year, are on the leased land.
UAgreed to co-sponsor a tennis tournament Aug. 20-24 at Mill Creek Park's rebuilt Volney Rogers Field tennis courts with the Trumbull County Tennis Association. It is the park's first public tennis tournament in about 15 years, said Tom Bresko, park recreation director.
UApproved a conservation easement for 12 acres of privately owned land along Mill Creek near New Buffalo and Renkenberger roads in Beaver Township, under which park officials will visit the land annually to make sure it remains undeveloped.