FREDERICKTOWN — Fredericktown will have a public plaza and water amenities for children on the west side of Main Street by the fall, the contractor of the plaza project Dan Houser said.
The approximately $1 million project is funded by private donors and reallocated funds from a community center project that was never completed, all of which comes through the Knox County Foundation, president of Knox County Foundation Jeffery Scott said.
The construction of an open air public plaza with seating, a 1,200 square-foot splash pad (an outdoor play area with sprinklers and fountains) and a heated public restroom began in May at 69 North Main Street, Scott said. He expects the project to be completed by September, with the hope that children can use the splash pad by the conclusion of Ohio’s hot weather.
“It’s generally just a place for folks to gather, sit, hangout,” Scott said. “Their kids can cool off on a hot day. They can sip some coffee and talk to a friend.
“They can walk a block downtown and do some shopping.”
The project’s general contractor is Shrock Construction, with Patterson Pools leading the splash pad construction, and its architect is Green Valley Design, Scott said.
Houser, of Shrock Construction, said the crew is currently demoing and putting in utilities at the site, including water and sewer lines. The next phase will be putting in new retainer walls, he said.
The construction is progressing on schedule, Houser said, but the crew has had to plan ahead as material pricing and lead times, the amount of time it takes to place an order with a supplier and receive it, are rising because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Jeffrey Salva, the principal architect of Green Valley Design, said designing the plaza and splash park within a two-lot space was challenging. The space opened following the construction of the Interchurch Social Services building last year, Salva said.
“It’s a constrained site because it is downtown,” Salva said. “We didn’t have a great amount of real estate to work with.”
While Salva has worked with swimming pool designers before, he has never designed a swimming pool, nor a splash pad, he said. He intends for the splash pad to be multi-functional. When the water is turned off, it can serve as a place to host festivals and vendors, he said.
Scott compared the plaza project to the dog fountain in Mount Vernon, saying it is intended to create an open environment where people can gather.
The Fredericktown community has pushed for a public gathering space in the past.
A group known as the Fredericktown Community Center Steering Committee formed over a decade ago to assess the feasibility of building a recreation center and eventually fundraised to build the facility, Scott said. In 2017, mayor Jerry Day announced that building a community center was not feasible for the village.
The committee had transferred the funds to the Knox County Foundation, and the money was sitting, unused, with the foundation. In 2020, the foundation considered ways to make use of the dormant funds, along with input from the Village of Fredericktown, the Recreation District, the Fredericktown Community Foundation, and others, Scott said.
“The idea behind the community center was social interaction, health, wellness, exercise and we think all those things tie into the project we’re doing,” Scott said.
The Knox County Foundation consulted the Fredericktown Community Foundation and the Ohio Attorney General to reallocate the community center funds for the project.
“We filed what is known as a cy-près, which essentially asks the state to affirm that the purpose for which the funds are being used is in line with the broad intent with what the original donors would have wanted, and the attorney general signed off on that last fall,” Scott said.
The foundation also raised money specifically for the project. Donors included many of the main employers in Fredericktown as well as individuals.
In addition to using funds to build the plaza, the foundation created an endowment fund to financially support the ongoing upkeep of the plaza, Scott said.
The foundation has set aside additional funds, including a permanent endowment (which holds more than $330,000 in assets) that will fund nonprofits pursuing projects that benefit the wellness of Fredericktown and nearly $90,000 of funds that are immediately available for grantmaking for related projects, Scott said.
