MANSFIELD, Ohio – Mansfield’s last brick road within city limits is scheduled to have its surface replaced with asphalt.
According to Mansfield Mayor Tim Theaker and City Engineer Bob Bianchi, the Columbia Avenue project will begin Friday with crews prepping the road and setting up signs.
The bricks will start to come out Monday.
The road was built in 1921, Theaker said, and consists of approximately 90,000 bricks. The city hopes to save 70,000 bricks for future use.
“Several years back, we had a petition from the homeowners here that wanted to save this road,” Theaker said. “Over time, those petitioners have either moved on or are no longer around, so the current people that live along this street now feel its best (to replace the bricks with asphalt) because if you drive down the street, it’s falling apart.”
To maintain the road with bricks would be cost prohibitive, he added.
Once all the bricks have been removed, a new foundation will be put down and the road will be repaved with asphalt.
The entire project, which Bianchi said has been in the works for about a year, costs $80,000. It will be funded through the city’s Street Resurfacing Income Tax, also known as the Pothole Haters Tax.
“It’s a quarter percent income tax,” Bianchi said of the tax. “(The project) is contracted through Kokosing Construction.”
The salvaged bricks will be stored at the City Service Complex, 480 Park Ave. West.
Theaker said, in all, the project should be done within a week and a half.
Of the uses the bricks could have, the mayor said they could be used for crosswalks in the Downtown Square.
“There’s all kinds of ideas we can think of and figure out, but it all comes with funding,” he said. “And right now, we don’t have that kind of funding.”
The city worked with the Mansfield Historical Preservation Committee in deciding to save the bricks for repurposing.
Before Columbia Avenue, the last brick road in Mansfield to have its bricks taken up and replaced with asphalt was Davey Avenue, off of Marion Avenue, about 20 years ago, Bicanchi said.
“Most of the brick roads were not taken up, they were resurfaced,” he added. “So asphalt was placed over the bricks.”
