During the summer, residents of Sandusky’s Southside can hear children laughing and playing basketball in the MacArthur Park neighborhood. However, it wasn’t always this way.
“This area hasn’t received any attention in years; there wasn’t much done over here, and it was almost forgotten,” said Dora Grant, a Sandusky resident.
Soldiers returning from WWII settled on the south side of the neighborhood, which was originally built to provide homes for heroes. However, over time, the historic neighborhood attracted lower-income families.
“This was an area that did not have a lot of love, but it had just enough to keep families coming here,” said Tondra Frisby, Sandusky Youth Program Supervisor.
However, residents saw potential in the area and wanted to involve the city.
“We formed a group and began inviting the city out here for meetings. We eventually started working together and saw amazing results,” Grant explained.
This is how the city came up with the Southside neighborhood plan for 2023.
“Every area in our city is important, but this one has been neglected for decades, most likely due to a lack of funding. So it’s great to be able to spend money here to improve people’s quality of life,” said Richard Brady, President of the Sandusky City Commission.
Sandusky’s efforts to improve quality of life began with two projects: the renovation of Churchwell Park and the first phase of the MacArthur Park infrastructure project.
“We’ve been fortunate enough to invest nearly $4 million in this renovation. It is both a utility and park improvement. This park cost approximately $1,200,000, with the utility portion of the project costing roughly twice as much. The federal government built this park in the 1930s, and utilities ran 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,” Brady explained.
In addition to replacing old utility pipes, they installed new sidewalks and repaved roads. And as for the park, they let the kids design it.
“This gave the kids the motivation to be a part of something big in the city. “They brought these renderings of various playground features and gave them dots indicating what they wanted to see the most,” Frisby said.
Children were also able to draw their vision and watch it come to life.
“The kids wrote they like to swing, climb, get wet and now we have all that here,” Frisby told me.
Walking paths, a renovated basketball court, a new playground, and a splash pad were all part of the renovations.
Floyd Churchwell, Sandusky’s first African American police officer and Southside resident, was honored with the park’s dedication.
“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,” replied Brady.
Phase II will include the same scope of work for the park’s eastern section, but the Southside plan is about more than just improving infrastructure; it is also demonstrating that once-ignored neighborhoods matter.
“The people over here are great; they just need some assistance. And if we can help each other, that’s what we should do,” Grant said.
The city intends to begin construction on phase II this fall.
