Trustees break ground for park

By ELISE FRANCO

The Canfield Soccer Club surprised trustees with $50,000 to help fund the new park project.

CANFIELD — Trustee Bill Reese said he wished they’d brought a shovel for every person who showed up to celebrate the groundbreaking for the new Canfield Township park.

“There are so many people here,” he said. “If we’d brought more shovels we wouldn’t even need a backhoe.”

The township’s trustees, along with the project’s architect, Thomas Keller, and contractors, broke ground Tuesday morning on the 58-acre property on Herbert Road, a little more than a mile west of state Route 46.

Reese and Trustee Randy Brashen said the township has major plans for the park, and it already has generated a lot of enthusiasm from residents as well as administrators.

“We’ve been waiting 20 years for this,” Brashen said. “We are so excited because it has so much potential.”

Reese said contractors from Danco General Constructing Inc. of Lordstown should begin working on the first phase of the park by Aug. 1.

Phase one includes a lake with a gazebo, athletic fields, including the first soccer fields in Canfield, and a main entry to the park.

As a surprise, the Canfield Soccer Club presented the township with a check for $50,000 to help fund the project.

“We knew we’d be getting a contribution,” Reese said. “But we didn’t know it would be this much this soon.”

Frank Mancini, vice president of the Youngstown Area Youth Soccer League, said the soccer fields have been a long time coming.

“Now we can catch up to the other teams and have tournaments here in Canfield,” he said.

Mancini, who coaches girls under 10 and under 12, said the teams have had to use other fields at Hilltop Elementary School, Canfield High School and the Canfield Fairgrounds.

The land was formerly owned by Jerry DeCamp of Canfield and has been in his family as a dairy farm since the mid-1800s.

“[My family] would say today, ‘If you can’t farm on it, a park is the next best thing,’” DeCamp said.

He doesn’t know what the plans are for the house that sits on the property but said it would be nice if it could be preserved.

“I wouldn’t hold a grudge if they have to take it down,” DeCamp said. “I’m happy I held out and sold the land to the township, because I wanted to see something like [the park] rather than 70 acres of houses.”

Reese said the first phase of the park project will cost around $500,000 and is slated for completion in spring 2009. Construction on the second phase of the park, a projected $1.2 million administration building and a restroom/concession stand complex, will begin before the first phase is even halfway completed, he said.

“We have the $1.2 million set aside for the administration building, but we’re hoping after we get bids it’ll come in under that,” Reese said. “If it does, we can include a kiddie playground in the second phase.”

The playground, built specifically for toddlers, will be equipped with a 6-foot-high fence all the way around so children can’t get out, he said.

Reese said the best thing about the park is that none of the funding is coming out of taxpayers’ pockets — it comes solely from a tax hotels pay to the township as well as money collected from land developers over the past 20 years.

“When a developer puts in a development, a certain amount of green space has to be designated,” Reese said. “Instead of taking that land, we can opt to take money for it.”

A name for the park has not been decided, but Brashen said the trustees are hoping for someone to make a donation to the project and in turn receive naming rights.

The trustees said possible future plans for the park include a trail that connects to Mill Creek Park, a band shell and stage for concerts and a community center, which will be built in correlation with Old North Church of Canfield.

“It’s a pretty big project, and when we are all finished, costs will be in the $5 million to $7 million range,” Reese said.

efranco@vindy.com