MANSFIELD — The decaying Liberty Park pavilion building on the city’s northeast side was demolished on Monday.
The site of the decades-old building will be returned to grass with the possibility of expanding the parking lot at the park, according to Mark Abrams, the city’s parks and recreation department superintendent.
He said the city hopes to re-do the Liberty Park parking lot next year. The park is located along Grace Street.
Abrams said the pavilion has been out of service for the last three years.
“That pavilion over the last few years has been deteriorating to the point that the side walls were starting to fall in,” Abrams said Tuesday.
The city paid Robert’s Demolition & Excavation from Lucas $28,000 to do the work, said Abrams, who estimated the two-story building was about 60 years old.
“It was going to be too much to try to repair it. We had issues with the foundation,” Abrams said, estimating the building at about 1,500 square feet.
“With the amount of vandalism taking place and other issues with the building, it was just impossible to keep up the building.”
The demolition of the pavilion was planned for this spring, but was delayed due to the contractor’s unavailability.
He said the city plans to convert the old bathhouse at the former Liberty Park pool into an enclosed pavilion. That bathhouse was built when the former pool was constructed through the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s.
“It’s a historic building,” Abrams said.
The Liberty Park pool, the only one in the city, was closed in 2021 due to costly maintenance issues. The city unsuccessfully tried to get voter support for a quarter-percent income tax increase for parks in 2022.
The goal with those new funds was to build a new, $8 million facility at Liberty Park.
I was born in Mansfield in 19 fifmy father played baseball at Liberty park with the merchants. His name was Myron watch on but he went by Mike. I found a small article on an emergency baseball. It was a team picture from 1951.
I just can’t seem to find. A whole lot about the merchants. And my father played baseball in man still for a long time. And I think at 1 time he even managed a team and he was a pretty good pitcher. If I remember correctly a real good pitcher. Information is kind of hard to get from back in those days.Just wondering if you had any information on the merchants and my father’s name