43
Park seeking land in Sebring
A proposed new park would serve western Mahoning County.
YOUNGSTOWN — The Mill Creek Metropolitan Park District is seeking state funds to acquire 39 acres of park land in Sebring and to pay for a conservation easement on 66 acres of Boardman wetlands.
The park district will apply for grants from the Ohio Public Works Commission’s Clean Ohio Conservation program to fund these efforts to preserve natural resources. It will seek $104,800 for the Sebring purchase and $99,000 for the Boardman easement.
The Mahoning County commissioners have passed resolutions in support of both grant applications. Friday is the deadline for filing those applications with the Eastgate Regional Council of Governments.
The application process is competitive, and the park district likely will know in 30 to 60 days whether its applications will be successful, said Justin Rogers, a landscape architect with the park district.
The park district seeks to buy the 39-acre Sebring Woods on the northeast corner of Johnson and Courtney roads from the village of Sebring and turn it into a park to be managed by the park district.
If it succeeds in acquiring the property, the park district plans to establish hiking trails through the diversified acreage of the proposed park, Rogers said.
“It’s wetlands. It is forested. There are some grassland areas, but it is all in a natural state,” Rogers said of the Sebring acreage. Fish Creek runs through the proposed park.
“There’s a lot of wetland significance right there, and this is an ideal usage for that land,” because wetlands can’t be used for any other purpose, said John Smith, mayor of Sebring.
“It’s not only going to benefit Sebring, but it’ll benefit the surrounding community,” in western Mahoning County, the mayor said.
The park could also help solve a perennial public relations problem facing the park district.
Many Sebring village residents have said it’s unfair that villagers collectively pay $70,000 a year to the park district through its countywide property tax, but the district doesn’t operate any parks near enough for them to visit conveniently and frequently, Smith said.
“Once they see that there’s something tangible that they can go out and touch and see, they’re going to look differently at the Mill Creek Park situation,” the village mayor said.
The closest of the Mill Creek MetroParks to Sebring now is the Vickers Nature Preserve and Buckeye Horse Park in Ellsworth Township, Rogers acknowledged.
The park district also seeks to obtain an easement on privately owned Boardman wetlands, known as the Preserve Easement, to keep that land in its natural state.
That land, located in the Mill Creek watershed and owned by Bud Williamson, is in a triangle bounded by Tippecanoe and Western Reserve roads and the Ohio Turnpike.
“It’s a wetland that has been identified as a Category Three wetland by the Ohio EPA, which is the highest quality within the state,” Rogers said.
The Boardman land is just west of Hitchcock Woods, which is an undeveloped section of Mill Creek Park.
As part of a long-term strategy to protect the environmental quality of Mill Creek, the park has been acquiring land and conservation easements in the Mill Creek watershed in recent years, Rogers said.