MANSFIELD — Lyndon Johnson was president. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. The Tet Offensive changed the way many Americans looked at the Vietnam War.
It was 1968 — the same year Richland County opened a new county courthouse at 50 Park Ave. East in downtown Mansfield.
Fast forward nearly six decades and large portions of the five-story building remained largely untouched, saved for maintenance efforts.
That’s until a $5.3 million major renovation began in 2022 that has redone and repurposed many areas of the courthouse.
A celebration of that work and a video documenting it are scheduled on Tuesday. The video will be shown publicly for the first time at 11 a.m. during a commissioners’ meeting and again at 1 p.m. when a ribbon is cut on new county land bank offices.
The renovation project began as a simple request from Richland County Common Pleas Court judges Phil Naumoff and Brent Robinson for a fourth courtroom in 2021. That project triggered a series of improvements since the work began.
What exactly has been done in the last four years?
— A new Clerk of Courts office and space for grand jury sessions created on a floor that once housed the county jail.
— A new fourth courtroom for Common Pleas Court where the former clerk’s office once stood.
— Renovated commons areas on four of the five floors and bathrooms on all five floors.
— Most recently, the bottom floor was renovated to create new offices for the Richland County Land Bank, a new employee break room and an employee workout room. That floor was once home to the Richland County Sheriff’s Office.
“The thing we are most proud of is this was a debt-free endeavor,” Commissioner Tony Vero said Thursday morning. “We were certainly fortunate enough to get (American) Rescue Plan Act money.”
ARPA funded 90 percent of the project, according to commissioners.
“But we also have been able to use capital for additional items and we’re proud the county is in a financial position where we didn’t have to borrow money,” Vero said.
Commissioner Darrell Banks agreed and praised the work of Josh Hicks, the county maintenance supervisor.
“We ran into obstacles all along the way and it was a lot of work. Josh’s diligence to do what we asked be done and to ride herd with the contractors …. he did a great service to the county and we appreciate him,” Banks said.
The video, produced by DRM Productions of Mansfield, documents the work as it was done, according to Vero, who said it would stand as the 2026 “State of the County” video.
“It’ll be sort of a time capsule of where we were and where we are and we’re proud of it,” he said.
“You don’t want to build Taj Mahal because you have the taxpayers’ dollars to work with. But you certainly want to create an environment that is suitable for taxpayers, staff and visitors to the building.
“We finally achieved that.”