PERRYSBURG – The Wood County Park District expects to finalize the purchase of property at the J.C. Reuthinger Memorial Preserve later this month.
“This is a long time coming,” said district board Chair Rebecca Ferguson at the April meeting.
The board approved a resolution authorizing Director Chris Smalley to proceed with all necessary actions to acquire the 30.31 acres from Barbara Brossia and Jeffrey Steed.
The purchased property is east of the preserve, which is located on Oregon Road in Perrysburg Township.
The district will pay $1.2 million for the parcel with the owner donating 3.11 acres of homestead.
The district applied for and received an Clean Ohio Greenspace Conservation worth $675,000. Additional funds were raised through donations of $250,000 from the Wood County Commissioners, $17,000 from the Friends of the Wood County Parks, $80,000 from the Wood County Port Authority, and $30,000 from the wetland mitigation fund. The park district contributed around $154,000.
“We were so fortunate. It was kind of the perfect storm,” Smalley said. “The family reached out to us. That was the first domino. Every point from then on, we had great support from the community.”
The land acquisition will take Reuthinger to over 100 acres, the second largest of the county parks behind Bradner Preserve.
The district will convert what is now a soybean field into a wet prairie.
The site will be prepped before it is seeded and it will be monitored for the stray soybean plant, Smalley said.
The board authorized spending $20,773 to purchase specialized seed from Ohio Prairie Nursery, in Hiram.
“I can’t believe we’re finally getting this done,” Ferguson said.
In other reports, the board learned that the parks had a record number of visitors during the eclipse.
Jim Witter, park program manager, said there were around 500 visitors at the Bradner Preserve, some from Idaho, Seattle and Los Angeles.
He said staff had to close the three parks that were chosen as viewing spots once they were full.
“It was something else, pretty remarkable,” he said.
