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<\/p>\nGENEVA-ON-THE-LAKE, Ohio \u2014 It has become a bit of an unintended attraction for people passing by Geneva Township Park. <\/p>\n
Crews have begun work to restore the beach at the park after a warmer winter in 2020 eroded 80 feet from the shoreline. <\/p>\n
Watch that story from 2020 here: <\/p>\n
Erosion in Geneva-on-the-Lake erases 35 feet of shoreline in one week<\/p>\n
Years of planning and grant writing kept Mayor Dwayne Bennett and his team at Geneva-on-the-Lake busy as they searched for funding to bring the beach back.<\/p>\n
“There’s just not a lot of money, grant-wise, for a shoreline,” Bennett said. “People come from Pittsburgh, Youngstown. They came here because of the beach.” <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Gary Cilli <\/p>\n
Gary Cilli provided News 5 with this family photo of him from 1965, where the beach at Geneva Township Park went up the hill and was a popular spot for many. <\/p>\n
The project involves creating a heavy stone barrier parallel to the coast to help reduce the impact from waves while still allowing water to freely flow to the beach. <\/p>\n
“It kind of swirls the sand around and then exits back out, so you don’t completely trap that sand,” Bennett explained. <\/p>\n
The $1.3 million project is funded by state grants, including the Appalachian Community Grant Program. <\/p>\n
For resident Rich Phinney, the project is deeply personal. He lives right across the street from the park and watched the shoreline disappear in 2020.<\/p>\n
“It’s sad it’s gone in a hurry,” Phinney told News 5 in 2020. <\/p>\n
Now, he walks by it every day. <\/p>\n
“I check with them every morning to make sure they’re getting the job done,” Phinney said. “It’s a beautiful park to go and look at the lake, but you can’t go in it very easily. This is going to be awesome that we can have a place to swim right here.” <\/p>\n
![\"Screenshot](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1784668694_936_.png\")
<\/p>\n
News 5<\/p>\n
Mayor Dwayne Bennett, right, points out how the village quickly lost about 80 feet of land and beach in 2020 due to erosion. <\/p>\n
Because of the grant requirements, the project must be completed by the end of October. Mayor Bennett told News 5 he hopes to see it wrapped up by mid-September, with a long-term goal of addressing more of the shoreline where the beach disappeared as well. <\/p>\n
“The goal is to do [it] all the way down the whole strip,” Bennett said.<\/p>\n
Clay LePard is the Ashtabula, Geauga and Portage counties reporter at News 5 Cleveland. Follow him on X @ClayLePard<\/a>, on Facebook ClayLePardTV<\/a> or email him at Clay.LePard@wews.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GENEVA-ON-THE-LAKE, Ohio \u2014 It has become a bit of an unintended attraction for people passing by Geneva Township…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":248780,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[105726,36719,106475,136,138,137,74741,7961,260,24700],"class_list":["post-248779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-erie","tag-ashtabula-county","tag-beach","tag-beach-restoration","tag-erie","tag-erie-headlines","tag-erie-news","tag-erosion","tag-geneva-on-the-lake","tag-lake-erie","tag-shoreline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}