MANSFIELD — Students from Mansfield Senior High School and Madison Comprehensive High School on Monday reached back through the ages to help preserve an 87-year-old structure at Liberty Park.
About 20 students in the respective schools’ carpentry and electrician programs teamed with the city’s Parks & Recreation department to help demolish the interior of the park’s bathhouse.
The structure was built in 1937 by local tradesmen through the federal Works Progress Administration — using local sandstone.
It was built for local residents using the Liberty Park pool, which opened in 1936, but was permanently closed in 2021 due to major maintenance issues.
Mansfield has no public swimming pool today. Residents rejected a 0.25-percent municipal income tax increase in May 2022 that would have fueled the city’s “master plan” for parks, including a new $8 million pool and aquatics center at Liberty Park.
Mayor Jodie Perry said Tuesday there are no plans to re-open the pool, but would like to make the old bathhouse into a pavilion that residents could use. The park’s old pavilion was demolished in 2023.
“I have been asked a lot about the pool at Liberty,” Perry said in a Facebook post. “However, it needs to go back through (Ohio) Health Department licensing, which means it would need to come up to current codes.
“We got some estimates on how much that would be. When it got to be more than a million, we decided it would be better to put that money towards a new pool.
“We will soon begin soliciting some feedback on what residents would like to see in a new facility, stay tuned!” the mayor posted.
(City of Mansfield photos below show students from Mansfield Senior and Madison Comprehensive high schools working at the old bathhouse at Liberty Park on Monday.)
Louis Andres, the city’s public works director, said he spoke with two school districts about projects that could provide students with real-world experience.
He said the bathhouse project was perfect for the students, accompanied by their instructors.
“(Mansfield architect) Dan Seckel is going to work with us this fall to come up with a plan on what we can do with the bathhouse. We want to make it into a pavilion and preserve the WPA project, including the sandstone.
“We have a contractor that did our sandstone arches that’s willing to come and do that. We got a cost for that. Then we met with the schools and they said we can come and help you demo (the interior) and clean it up and we said that would be great,” Andres said.
“So what they did yesterday was that they went in and demolished all of the stalls, all the stuff that was outdated, and open that up so we can make it into a pavilion.
“We were able to get a dumpster there and they were able to load it on. They came in at about 8:30 in the morning and last one left about 1:30 p.m. So we had about 20 kids with both groups there,” Andres said.
He said the bathhouse will become a shelter house, “with the ambience of what the original project was, the footprint.”
“It’ll look basically the same. It just will have a different use. We will use it as a pavilion, versus a bathhouse,” Andres said.
He said working with the schools is an administration goal.
“We’re trying to do more and more with the schools, like the baseball diamond up at Liberty. Madison Middle School, their athletic department is going to be redoing that so they have a baseball field to use.
“We’re working with some of the groups, now a church group, to replace the bridge there. So we are really concentrating heavily on Liberty, because there’s just a lot of stuff that needs to be done and we have a lot of synergy in a lot of groups that are willing to help us,” Andres said.
“So that’s the reason why we were working at Liberty, because we have willing partners and donors and stuff to help us get those projects done. So just about every day that you go, there’s something new happening,” he said.
What won’t be happening is a re-opening of the old pool at Liberty, though Perry didn’t rule out a new public pool at the park.
“We’re still relying on the (master) parks plan, but it has been five years and things have changed,” said Perry, who took office in January, succeeding former Mayor Tim Theaker who had the job for 12 years.
“One of the questions I would have is just the location. Should it be more centrally located is something that we’ve been talking about and I think we would like some some feedback,” Perry said.
“Now, that doesn’t mean if it were to not end up at Liberty that we wouldn’t consider something, not a pool, but something else there,” she said.
“All that kind of has to be figured out as part of this,” the mayor said.
Splash pads at Johns Park and North Lake Park should be open by Memorial Day weekend, according to Andres.