The Lake Erie Love sign on the Port Clinton beach is popular for picture taking, so city workers added enhancements to help keep the cameras in focus. (Photo by D’Arcy Patrick Egan)

Beautiful, balmy blue skies lured residents and visitors to the Port Clinton beach last weekend, where they found new concrete walkways and user-friendly steps being put in place.

As usual, the Lake Erie Love sign in Waterworks Park was the place to stop for family photographs. City work crews had already made it more accommodating, with steps behind the sign making it easier to snap a photo or two.

Masonry Construction Company will also put in unique Mobi-Mat mats on the sandy slope of beach, allowing people with mobility problems to easily access a path to the beach and shoreline waters.

The nearby Portage River will also become a a great place for a stroll from the downtown area to the Lake Erie shoreline. A walkway has been approved for the east bank of the Portage River, which will soon be designated as the Portage River Water Trail.

Getting to the Lake Erie beach will soon be a snap. Port Clinton workers are installing a concrete walkway around the Lake Erie Love sign and a small boat launch ramp just to the east. Unique Mobi-Mats will also be placed on the slope to the beach, which will help to give the disabled access the sand and water. (Photo by D’Arcy Patrick Egan).

To embrace that designation, a canoe and kayak launch will be constructed on the Lake Erie beach, just a few steps east of the Lake Erie Love Sign.

The waterfront walkway project on the Portage River was made possible by a $1.9 million grant from Ohio Department of Transportation’s Transportation Alternatives Program in 2017, and the funds are now available.

The east end of the Port Clinton beach, across from Lakeview Park, will also be improved after a two-year closure due to buried high voltage wires that fed three pump stations on the shoreline. City workers will soon tackle that rocky stretch of beach, remove the concrete Jersey Barriers and rejuvenate the sandy beach.

A Mobi-Mat like the one to be installed near the Lake Erie Love sign will also be added at the east end of the beach to allow access for the disabled.