Lawrence Avenue Phase Two Revitalization Plan In The Works

Plans to spruce up Ellwood City’s Main Street are complete and ready for borough council approval.

CT Consultants, Franus Architectural Associates, and Loukas Engineering have put months of research and design into a Phase Two Revitalization Plan that will not only improve the overall look of the central business district from 4th to 6th Streets but will also fix some underlying problems.

One of those “problems” according to architect Dan Franus is storm water accumulation on the street which rises to a height that, at times, floods businesses. Part of the plan includes new sidewalks and milling of the street. This process will add height to the sidewalks bringing them to the 6-inch requirement and it will level out the street. Also new lines will allow for better drainage.

Another issue that the beautification process will solve is a lack of lighting. If it seems like Main Street is dark, that’s because it is. According to Franus, he did some research of the current lighting and found the illumination to be less than desirable. The new plan features LED lighting.

“We will be putting more light out,” Franus said. “But it will be more efficient since the fixtures will be LED.”

The fixtures will also be 3.5 feet taller than the current ones.

Besides an overhaul of the stormwater management currently in place and new street lights, Phase Two will also include:

• New sidewalks
• New landscaping
• New traffic signals on both 5th and Lawrence and 6th Street
• New pedestrian markers
• A new look to the streetscape around the borough building
• A new Fireman’s Memorial site on the 500 block

Franus said all the new lighting will be decorative. The traffic signals will feature a visually appealing mast arm that will extend out over the streets. The design includes 2 decorative poles with lights at all four points of the intersection, which will provide better visibility to drivers in all directions.

The plan features consistent design details that match the street lights to the traffic signals to a welcome “gate” at the intersection where Marketplace on Main is located that will be made from materials that Ellwood City is known for: Seamless Tubing.

“Seamless tubing is the heritage of Ellwood City,” Franus said.

According to an article on Lawrencecountymemoirs.com, “Ralph C. Stiefel (1862-1938), a Swiss-born highly-educated engineer, arrived in the manufacturing center of Ellwood City, Pennsylvania, in 1894. He had come from England, where he had perfected a new method of piercing steel rods to make seamless tubes and pipes. Previous methods had featured flat sheets of steel being shaped into tubes and welded, but the welds would inevitably break under extreme pressure.”

Franus said the team that developed the Phase Two plan wanted to keep in mind the history of Ellwood City while deciding on design details. They also wanted to keep consistent with Phase One of the plan which includes the Community Plaza and Farmer’s Market areas.

In maintaining that consistency, the team that developed the Phase Two plan has envisioned a borough building streetscape that seamlessly transitions from the Community Plaza to the borough building—the only separation being Lawrence Avenue between the two.

Franus said that desire to have a seamless transition encouraged a design that would bring the first level of the borough building as it stands now to sidewalk level, where pedestrians would walk through five large veteran’s memorials fanned out toward the street leading to a waterfall area with steps on both sides. The center of the waterfall area would feature the WWI memorial. The three flagpoles in front of the building will be also positioned to the right. The memorial that features the names of veterans who perished in service will have a prominent place to the right of the steps at sidewalk level. Details down to sidewalk pattern in front of the borough building will have significant meaning.

“The broken pattern of the sidewalk represents broken families,” Franus said referring to honoring those men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice in war.

Franus said no memorial will go unused or unrecognized as they will all be repurposed and prominently displayed as part of the new design.

That includes the monuments for the firefighters, which will have their own place among a seating area on the left side at the front of the building at sidewalk level. A bell will be placed at the back corner of that area.

A new memorial will be constructed in the empty lot at the site in the 500 block where the former Ellton Hotel stood before a Dec. 4, 1989 fire claimed it and the lives of two beloved Ellwood City Firefighters, Paul Frederick and David Martino.

The plan for that site includes a decorative fence and planters that will merge into the center of the fence where the Fireman’s Memorial that is currently located at the borough building will be highlighted. Decorative paving will be featured in front of that memorial—a detail that CT Consulants felt would draw attention to the memorial.

The next step, according to Franus, is borough approval.

“Once we get borough approval,” he said. “The plan is shovel ready.”

That is if the borough and involved firms are able to get grant funding Franus said. He said grants will be sought from the same sources and organizations that provided the funding for Phase One, as those organizations have visited the Community Plaza and were pleased with the results.

“They loved it,” Franus said. “It is a lot easier to get funds following a successful project.”

The borough will have to kick in some financial backing, Franus said, but the intention is to get as much in grants and funding as possible. He sees the project as a win, win situation stating that the project will offer the borough a large return on investment. He said the stormwater drainage issues along with the lack of lighting would need to be addressed by the borough, so this will help them remedy those problems.

The Phase Two project has been estimated to cost around $5 million.

Plans for revitalization in the business district won’t stop with Phase Two, according to Franus. Next up should funding and support be available, will be improvements to Sixth-Eighth Streets.

To learn more about the Seamless Tubing history of Ellwood City:

https://ellwoodcity.org/2017/11/17/ellwood-city-area-historical-society-foundries-of-freedom/

https://ellwoodcity.org/2016/03/18/casualties-of-steel-a-documentary-on-the-closing-of-ellwoods-u-s-steel/