A plan to build new barricades around the West Mansfield Conservation Club’s shooting range was approved, but shooting will have to remain on hold until the construction is complete.
The West Mansfield Conservation Club shooting range will be allowed to reopen after new barriers and a security gate are constructed. (EXAMINER FILE PHOTO)
The Perry Township Board of Zoning Appeals voted Thursday evening to grant a conditional use permit to the private nonprofit club upon completion of the project.
The club won’t, however, be allowed to let members shoot at the range with the exception of concealed carry classes which are led by NRA-certified instructors.
The Conservation Club has allowed shooting on the range, which lies just outside the West Mansfield village limits in Perry Township, for nearly 50 years. Although there is no clear record of it, it appears to have been “grandfathered” into the township’s zoning, BZA chair Kurt Penhorwood said at the start of the hearing.
In the summer of 2016, West Mansfield village employees began noticing bullet holes in the side of a building at the sewage treatment lagoon on an adjacent property and expressed concern that unsafe conditions at the range could result in injury to a village employee, nearby farmer or the people who use the pond, ball field and gathering hall on the Conservation Club property.
The club, at that time, had almost no retaining walls to stop bullets from leaving the property. By early spring, the club’s trustees managed to construct some barriers, but they have not stopped bullets from leaving the property.
Read complete story in Friday’s Examiner.
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