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Ohio’s state parks get spruced up
YOUNGSTOWN
As the summer outdoor recreation season approaches, visitors to state parks in Northeast Ohio will notice significant facilities improvements.
The improvements are being made possible by $88.5 million allocated in the state budget for state-park improvements.
“Our infrastructure is old. A lot of these parks were built in the ’60s and ’70s, and if we can improve our state parks, that improves the quality of life,” said James Zehringer, director of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, which oversees those parks.
“It’s very important to keep them up to date,” he added.
“We don’t charge for admission, so folks can come and bring their families” for a variety of activities, including hiking, horseback riding, disk golf and fishing, he said.
Zehringer said he has never thought of charging admission to state parks, saying it would be “extremely difficult to do” because many of the parks are large and have multiple entrances.
Ohio is one of seven states that don’t charge admission to state parks, he noted. All of Ohio’s taxpayers contribute toward the costs associated with state parks.
Zehringer and Gary Obermiller, chief of ODNR’s state parks and watercraft divisions, discussed the unprecedented capital-improvement investment in the 74 state parks in a recent appearance at a Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber luncheon at Mill Creek MetroParks’ Fellows Riverside Gardens.
A new picnic pavilion has been built at the Mosquito Lake beach, and utility hookups will be extended to additional campsites. New restrooms and a new shower house will be built at the campground there, Obermiller said.
New restrooms are planned for Beaver Creek State Park.
At Geneva State Park, the state is engaged in a multimillion-dollar project to reinforce the failing Lake Erie sea wall in the cabins area, which has sustained considerable wave erosion.
Superstorm Sandy “really took a toll on it” in the fall of 2012, he said.
There, 25 new cabins are being added. The state leases that park’s lodge area to Ashtabula County, which operates it.
At Punderson State Park, just over $6 million has been spent on improvements, Obermiller said.
There, upgrades to the heating, ventilating and air-conditioning system at Punderson Manor Lodge and Conference Center are under construction.
A new telecommunications-line installation completed in December has improved cable and Internet access in the cabins.
The tow rope for the sledding area was replaced in January.
Renovations to the indoor pool were completed last September, after the June 2015 completion of outdoor pool and locker-room renovations.
Obermiller also discussed ODNR’s navigational-aids grant to Youngstown this year of buoys that will warn canoeists and kayakers of hazardous industrial dams in the Mahoning River.
“Paddling sports have just grown tremendously in Ohio,” he said. “Those low-head dams are dangerous to our paddlers on our river systems,” and the buoys will warn paddlers where they must portage around those dams, he added.
The buoys are paid for by the state’s waterway safety fund, which consists of boat title and registration fees and powerboat fuel-tax revenue and U.S. Coast Guard matching funds.
“That really is a user-pay, user-benefit system, where those boaters are paying for those benefits,” he said.