Question: “When is the new parking lot for the B&O Trail/Trimble Road connector being opened? I rode by yesterday and saw the gates are still closed.”
MANSFIELD — A 20-space parking lot near the end of the connector trail linking Trimble Road to the B&O Trail could be open in the next few weeks.
That was the word Wednesday morning from Jordan Tackett, executive director of the Richland County Park District.
The lot off of Marion Avenue, just east of Home Road, is in the donation process to the park district from the Western Land Conservancy District, according to Tackett.
The WLCD granted permission for the 1.1-mile, $2.1 million connector trail to pass through its lands when the city of Mansfield planned and constructed it. The connector trail, which includes a tunnel beneath Trimble Road, opened in October.
Once the trail was opened, the county park district, which operates the B&O Trail, took charge of the connection, which provides another link from the popular recreational facility into the city of Mansfield.
Tackett said the donation process has taken a bit longer than expected, largely a paperwork issue.
“Once the parking lot is legally in our hands, it will be open to the public,” he said. “That has been the plan all along.”
He said the legal closing on the property is due by the end of May, “but it should (open) even before then.”
The Richland B&O Trail spans 18 miles and connects four of Richland County’s communities on its trek between North Lake Park in downtown Mansfield to the Village of Butler.
The vision for the connector trail began in 2018 when city of Mansfield engineer Bob Bianchi proposed it to City Council.
“A project starts with a vision,” Bianchi told City Council in 2018. “It may take 20 years (to get the trail connected to the downtown.) We have got to start,” Bianchi said.
In October 2022, City of Mansfield and Richland County officials joined representatives from the Western Reserve Land Conservancy District, engineers from K. E. McCartney & Associates and the Richland County Park District to explore the path that has now become the connector between the B&O and Trimble Road.
Construction contracts on the connector trail and the tunnel were both ultimately awarded to the Adena Corp. of Mansfield in a bidding process.
The 10-foot wide concrete trail was designed to meander through the Western Land Conservancy and property owned by OhioHealth. Both entities supported the project and entered into agreements to allow the city to construct the trail on their property.
“We had always envisioned it would become a community asset in this way,” Chris Szell, director of conservation project management for Western Reserve, said at the time. “We didn’t know what long-term plans would be for the property in terms of how the community wanted to use it.”
The project was largely funded through a myriad of federal and state grants, as well as American Rescue Plan Act funds available after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Local, regional and state officials painstakingly went through grant applications and funding procedures to pull all of the needed funding streams together.
