Improvement Project Moving Forward for Two State College Neighborhood Parks

Two neighborhood “pocket parks” in State College are getting some much needed improvements.

Nittany Village Park on Old Boalsburg Road and South Hills Park on Aikens Place will see several upgrades after borough council, as part of its consent agenda on Monday night, awarded a $170,371.55 contract to John Claar Excavating of Woodward for the renovation projects.

Both parks are “in substantial need for rehabilitation,” Borough Manager Tom Fountaine said. Six public meetings — three for each park — were held with neighboring residents earlier this year.

“We’ve spent time this year with both parks, working with the neighborhood around those parks to develop design standards for the parks,” Fountaine said.

According to the project description, improvements will include adding signage to define the park areas as public spaces, planting trees to increase the urban canopy, improving trail entrances to define public access points, creating walking paths, increasing native plantings, creating a “soothing space for adults and children with autism,” and replacing items such as playground equipment, picnic tables, benches, bike racks and garbage cans.

Construction is expected to be completed in December, though borough staff will install new plantings in the spring.

Nittany Village Park was the subject of community discussion last year when a local developer proposed building a four-story affordable housing apartment complex on the adjacent former RBR Recumbent Bicycles property at 1306 S. Atherton St.

Progress Development Group (PDG) proposed using about 5,500 square feet of the adjoining park property to construct the 36,000-square-foot building. As part of a long-term lease for the piece of park land, PDG would have installed and maintained new play equipment, play areas and landscaping.

After what PDG Executive Vice President Ara Kervandjian described as “considerable opposition from surrounding neighbors,” the proposal was withdrawn and the plans were scrapped. The former RBR property has since been leased to Smokers Square tobacco shop.

For the South Hills and Nittany Village park projects, State College has $164,690 in Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) money and $6,250 from a Bright Cities Grant for trees, shrubs and perennials.

At the start of Monday’s meeting council held a public hearing and voted to approve amending the CDBG 2022 Action Plan to reallocate $70,000 to the parks project.

An engineer’s cost estimate for the project was $130,000, but among the 10 bids received, John Claar Excavating’s was the lowest. Plant acquisition and installation will be performed by borough staff, reducing the overall cost by about $25,000.

“Those projects came in a little over budget and there’s a need to reallocate some additional funds to get those projects covered,” Fountaine said. “I think one of the recurring themes we’re seeing this year, as is everyone else, is that projects are coming in a little over budget and you’re going to hear that again and again, I think, for at least the next several months if not year.”

CDBG funds were reallocated from the owner-occupied housing rehabilitation line item, a program that borough Senior Planner Maureen Safko said can “expand and contract,” from year to year. Typically, the borough supports about two housing rehabilitation projects a year.

“As these funds are accumulated, we’re able to use them to respond to an immediate need of infrastructure because of the inflation and the supply chain issues driving up cost, labor issues driving up costs,” Safko said. “And these funds will be replenished in 2023 in part. We’ll receive more in 2023 and we’ll budget some more money for the same thing in 2024 to try to build that back up.”

The action plan amendments approved by council also included reallocating $90,000 to the East Beaver Avenue streetlight and curb ramp replacement project, part of an ongoing initiative in downtown State College.

“It’s really necessary to reallocate funds to move that project forward and complete that project,” Fountaine said.

Funds from the Food and Shelter Project line item for emergent needs in the action plan were also allocated to Out of the Cold: Centre County and Housing Transitions for case management needs, with each shelter program receiving $36,624.50.

“As the shelters have been able to put folks in non-congregate locations such as hotels, it really burdens their staff to be able to go out to those hotels and deliver case management services to those folks who are remotely located,” Safko saoid.

The Food and Shelter line item was established in 2020 with federal CARES Act funding to address COVID-related needs and Safko said the borough wants to make sure they are allocated before they would need to be returned.

“As we have had requests received from the the community housing agencies, we’ve been able to respond to those needs by allocating the food and shelter funds to those emergent needs,” she said.

“We don’t want to turn it back. We want to use it now to answer the needs of the housing agencies.”