What's up with Norton Bicentennial Park? Old ice plant will be coming down soon

Planners hope that by the end of this year, portions of the new Norton Bicentennial Park on North Sandusky Avenue will be ready for use.

The park is a project of the nonprofit Norton Bicentennial, Inc., which owns the property in the 500 block of North Sandusky, just north of the Sandusky River. Kelli Patterson, a representative of the nonprofit, stressed the park is not a city project.

This spring, the county land bank will use $352,250 it received through the state's building demolition and site revitalization program to demolish the former Home City Ice plant, 520 N. Sandusky Ave., said Randy Fischer, a spokesman for the nonprofit.

"They're doing their final approvals and getting their contractors lined up," he said. "That work should begin the first week of May.

"We've also just recently purchased the former Elite Driving School building and the plans are for that to come down at about the same time as the ice plant."

The demolition of the smaller building, 423 N. Sandusky Ave., will be funded separately, Patterson said. Norton Bicentennial, Inc., will pay for that project. Members plan to work with the contractor hired for the ice plant demolition to see if both buildings can be taken down at the same time.

The 423 N. Sandusky site will be used for overflow parking for the park, Patterson said. Waycraft Industries, which is just north of the site, may be able to use it for extra parking, too.

Eventually, having that site may make it possible to add an archway over North Sandusky, Fischer and Patterson acknowledged when asked if that was in the works.

"Someday, maybe, down the road, yes," Patterson said. "But that's way down the road. ... We haven't even approached ODOT or anything like that to see if that arch is a possibility."

"It was looked at back in '19, and then we haven't really pursued it other than showing the possible location for it on a drawing," Fischer said. "That's not in our immediate plans."

Plants native to the Sandusky River basin will be used in park

For now, the nonprofit's focus is on transforming the empty lot into a park.

After the old ice plant has been demolished, Norton Bicentennial will use $175,000 made available from the state's 2022 capital budget to begin beautifying the property and making it functional, Fischer and Patterson said.

"We're finalizing our conceptual plan of what would go back on that site," he said. "We would start on those things probably late-summer, early fall, to get some things done there."

While the state money isn't enough to pay for everything the group would like to do, "it will be a nice start," Fischer said.

Much of the asphalt currently on the site will be removed. How much of that gets done this year will depend in part on how much is left over after the demolition work is done, Fischer said. Some of the pavement may be kept "to provide a nice, solid base for what we're planning to do."

"We think that just having the ice plant down and ... a lot of the asphalt out and replaced with grass is going to be a vast improvement to what's there now," he said.

The group has continued to apply for additional grants.

"What we would like to do is basically start at North Sandusky Avenue and work our way out, back toward Harmon Park, depending on the funding that we can get — grants, whatever we can raise, that kind of thing," Patterson said.

"We want to do some things along North Sandusky, because we want the site to become active," Fischer said. "Our plans include some parking for food trucks and some seating for people, because we want to try to take advantage of the so-called lake traffic that flows through town on weekends in the summer."

Another area of focus will be along the river, between the ice plant site and Harmon Park. The group wants to add a lot of plants native to the Sandusky River basin, Fischer said. Members have been working with a Marengo-based greenhouse, Natives in Harmony, which specializes in such plants.

"We want to put a number of those in to beautify the site and to create some natural barriers for flooding," he said.

That will be part of the first phase of development for the park, he said.

Ultimately, they'd like to see the park have a "historical walk" that shares some of the community's history with visitors, Patterson said. Markers along the path will share historical facts.

Giant apple will be part of tribute to Johnny Appleseed

The other big project this year will be installation of a historical marker honoring Johnny Appleseed, which includes a 4-foot diameter fiberglass apple with a copper stem and leaf, all made in Bucyrus; two apple trees grown from Johnny Appleseed seeds; and a panel providing a brief history of the man's presence in Bucyrus.

"That apple is absolutely stunning," Patterson said.

Persuader Performance Boats, which also worked on the giant fiberglass bratwurst sandwich used to kick off the city's bicentennial celebration in 2021, helped create the apple. Bucyrus Copper Kettle Works created the stem and leaf. Jeremy Lutz, who painted the giant bratwurst, also painted the apple, with an eye toward realism, they said.

"That's all in the plans for the early improvements to the site," Fischer said.

The group will continue fundraising efforts for other planned improvements, Patterson said.

"We hope, by the end of this calendar year, to have some grass growing, some plants starting to grow and an area for some activity, some commercial activity, along Sandusky and the Johnny Appleseed area," Fischer said.

ggoble@gannett.com

419-559-7263

This article originally appeared on Bucyrus Telegraph-Forum: Park progress: Demolition of former ice plant planned this spring