By CARL E. FEATHER - Staff Writer - cfeather@starbeacon.com
JEFFERSON — Ashtabula County commissioners passed a resolution Tuesday supporting the efforts of the Ashtabula Maritime and Surface Transportation Museum to expand and upgrade the Walnut Boulevard museum.
Commissioners met last week in a work session with representatives of the nonprofit museum. Director Robert Frisbie and assistant director Glenn Beagle laid out the museum’s ambitious plan to build a new museum for its exhibits and roll back the existing building — a former lighthouse-keeper’s home — to its 1950s appearance.
The new museum would have three levels for displays, storage, restoration work and an expanded library and gift shop. Its most distinctive feature would be a freighter’s bow emerging from the Walnut Boulevard cliff toward the proposed North Shore Trail, which would take a detour through the bow.
Cost of the project has been pegged at $4 million, which the volunteers hope to raise through grants and donations.
The resolution states that the group has 110 members and six full-time volunteers, a volunteer professional model builder and several part-time volunteers.
Frisbie told commissioners during last week’s work session that the new museum would be a home to artifacts from the community’s maritime and railroading history, as well as a place where people can interact with local history through working models.
“We want to change this idea of going to a museum and saying ‘don’t touch,’” Frisbie told commissioners. “We want you to touch and will give you some things to touch.”
In other actions, commissioners:
n Approved a real-estate purchase agreement with Sawyer Logging for 38.566 acres of county-owned property on Green Road, Kingsville Township. Commissioner Joseph Moroski said the triangle of property remained from a previous sale of county-owned land on the road several years ago. Sawyer Logging had the high bid of $76,200;
n Approved the purchase of a service contract between Ashtabula County Community Action Agency and the Ashtabula County Department of Job and Family Services (DJFS) for home-delivered meals. The one-year contract is for $353,055;
n Approved a service contract between DJFS and Ashtabula County Common Pleas Court, Juvenile Division, for legal services in conjunction with the child-support enforcement program. The contract is not to exceed $57,926.87; and
n Approved placing a 1998 Chevrolet Astro utility van with 174,404 miles on the county’s Web site for public sale. The vehicle, from the Department of Environmental Services, has a bidding reserve of $500.
