SANDUSKY — During the summer on the Southside of Sandusky, people can hear kids laughing and playing basketball in the MacArthur Park neighborhood. However, it wasn’t always that way.
“This area hasn’t had any attention in years, there wasn’t much done over here, and it was like it was almost forgotten,” said Dora Grant, a Sandusky resident.
The neighborhood was originally built to give heroes a home, and soldiers returning from WWII settled in on the south side. But over the years, the historic neighborhood became home to lower-income families.
"This was an area that didn't have a lot of love, but it had just enough that kept families to come live here,” said Sandusky Youth Program Supervisor, Tondra Frisby.
But residents saw potential in the area and wanted to get the city involved.
“We formed a group, and we started inviting the city out here for meetings. Eventually, we began working together and started seeing awesome results,” said Grant.
This is how the city came up with the Southside neighborhood plan in 2023.
“Every area in our city is important, but this area has been one that, unfortunately, for probably money reasons, have been neglected for a few decades. So, it’s good to be able to spend the dollars here to improve the people's quality of life,” said President of the Sandusky City Commission Richard Brady.
Sandusky’s efforts to improve the quality of life started with two projects: the renovation of Churchwell Park and phase 1 of the MacArthur Park infrastructure project.
“We have been fortunate enough to put almost $4 million in this renovation. It's both a utility improvement a park improvement. About $1,200,000 went into this park and the utility portion of the project was about twice that amount. This park was built in 30s by the federal government, and the utilities were running underneath people's property. The utilities were not capable of handling utilities as they should be today, so we had to relocate water and sewer in almost every location out here,” said Brady.
In addition to replacing outdated utility pipes, they also put in new sidewalks and repaved roads. And as for the park— they wanted the kids to decide what it looked like.
“This gave the kids some kind of encouragement to be a part of something big in the city. They brought these renderings of different playground features and gave them dots on what they would like to see the most,” Frisby said.
Children were also able to draw their vision and see it come into fruition.
“The kids wrote they like to swing, climb, get wet and now we have all that here,” said Frisby.
The renovations included walking paths, a refurbished basketball court, a new playground and a splash pad.
The park was dedicated to Sandusky’s first African American police officer and Southside resident, Floyd Churchwell.
“Floyd Churchwell was a forerunner to community policing in our city, and he broke ground in that, and we owe him a debt of gratitude,” said Brady.
Phase II will include the same scope of work for the eastern part of the park, but the entire Southside plan is more than just about improving infrastructure; it’s also showing a once-neglected neighborhoods do matter.
“The people over here are great people; they just need some help. And if we can lift one another up and do things to help one another, then that's what we should do,” said Grant.
The city plans to break ground on phase II by fall.
