MANSFIELD — Renovating the former Liberty Park bathhouse is going to a cost a bit more than originally estimated.
The Mansfield Board of Control approved a $52,300 change order on Tuesday morning for Scout Construction, which found rot inside some of the walls and roof timbers of the historic 89-year-old building.
“When (Scout employees) pulled off the roof and the walls, they found some substantial rotting, which we didn’t expect, but now we have it,” Public Works Director Louis Andres said.
“We need the change order to get that lumber replaced and so we can start with the roofing and stuff like that.”
He said the grant which helped fund the original $643,350 project contained $30,000 in contract contingency money. The other $22,500 will come from the city’s parks department funds. Andres said the money for Liberty Park was in the parks department budget.
(Below are photos taken Tuesday morning of the renovation project underway at the former Liberty Park bathhouse. in Mansfield.)
According to the change order request, Scout Construction will tear out and replace several exterior wood walls, as well as a section of roof rafters.
Before Scout Construction began its work, Quality Stone Construction completed structural repairs to stabilize the building.
The effort is to preserve the bathhouse’s historic character while updating it for modern community use, including the historic sandstone structure of the bathhouse at the public park on the city’s northeast side, according to Andres.
Plans include accessibility improvements, interior upgrades, public restrooms, a catering kitchen and a meeting space.
“We are going to turn it into an outdoor pavilion,” Andres said earlier this year.
“The goal is to bring this space back to what it was designed for,” Andres has said. “Birthday parties, park programs, retirement celebrations — bringing people together.
“It will have ADA-compliant restrooms and a catering kitchen. It will be a nice upgrade.”
On Tuesday, Andres said the renovations should be complete by the end of October and a dedication of the new facility would likely be scheduled in early November.
Funding for the restoration includes $200,000 from the Richland County Foundation and $200,000 from the Milliron Foundation.
In the spring of 2024, students from Mansfield Senior High School and Madison Comprehensive High School carpentry and electrician programs teamed with park district employees 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.
The need for a bathhouse went away when the swimming pool at Liberty Park, which opened in 1936, closed permanently in August 2021 due to major maintenance issues, leaving the city without a public pool.
At the time of the closure, Mark Abrams, then the city’s parks and recreation superintendent, said there was a problem inside a “water line that’s probably been buried for 85 years” that led to issues with the retaining wall inside the pool pump house.
The city had also been forced to close the pool early in 2019 and 2020 due to maintenance problems.
