Serving Lucas, Ottawa, Sandusky and Wood Counties
Genoa’s village administrator Thomas Bergman is excited about some improvements coming to town in both the near future and over the next few years.
The village was awarded $50,000 from Ottawa County’s Parks and Trails Improvement Grant Program. Bergman said that the village had the highest scoring application and were the only entity to receive the full request.
“We were overjoyed for their support,” he said.
The grant will help with some trail improvements at Veterans Park with a paved path being constructed. Bergman hopes to have the project done this spring. Currently, it is just a grass path and Genoa’s public works did the excavation to put in the stone and catch basins.
The project is the village’s fourth in partnership with the parks district. The previous ones included the reconstruction of two tennis courts into four pickleball courts and one tennis court, the reconstruction of the basketball courts, and the construction of a bathroom and concession stand facility that gave running water and sanitation at the park for the first time in 150 years, Bergman said.
Another area project will be improvements to the larger of the village’s two water towers, or the half-million gallon one. The project is currently out for bid, and construction will probably start in the fall with completion in the spring of 2027.
On top of that, the project to extend the North Coast Inland Trail through downtown is hopefully taking shape sooner than later, Bergman said. The project is fully funded through an ODOT TAP grant, or Transportation Alternatives Program. The village is waiting for the checklists to be completed in order to put it out for bid.
That project will bring the bike trail from Washington Street up to 9th Street, and it will actually rebuild the old railroad bridge,” Bergman said. Although the timeline isn’t firm, he hopes to be able to start construction this fall with a 2027 completion as the lead time on a bridge is typically six months or so.
That project will lead to two more bridges being rebuilt in 2028, and the county is going to be rebuilding the Main Street bridge in 2029.
“We could see four bridges rebuilt in the next three years in town,” Bergman said. “It's very quiet right now, but I'm not complaining because it's about to ramp up in a big way.”
