Canonsburg Town Park to get new pavilion

Katie Anderson
Observer-Reporter

Canonsburg’s Town Park will have a new pavilion next year near the Woodland Road entrance.

The park board president, Rich Russo, provided borough council with an update on the pavilion’s funding during a Tuesday meeting. He said they have about $90,000 so far with a goal of $125,000.

The pavilion project was awarded $60,000 in Local Share Account money, which was part of the 2018 application process. Russo said additionally, the borough provided $10,000, Friends of Canonsburg Town Park donated $10,000, and the park board also donated $10,000.

Russo said the $90,000 is enough to construct the pavilion, but they also want to have a separate restroom facility next to it, for which they need the other $35,000. He said the Friends of the Park group as well as the park board will work together to come up with the additional funds with the start of a “community-based fundraising campaign” in the spring.

The new, open-air pavilion will be 24-by-36 square feet, with seating capacity between 50 and 80 people. It will be available to rent.

“The groundbreaking for the actual pavilion construction will happen in the spring of 2020, and the restroom will be dependent on the fundraising,” Russo said.

He anticipates both the pavilion and restrooms will be completed by mid-summer next year.

“As the park has gone through a little bit of a revitalization, one of the goals was to not add to the park, but to take what we have and fix it up,” Russo said.

As part of that goal, the borough will take down an old shelter that stands between Yoney Pavilion and Parkland Drive.

“That pavilion is structurally unsafe,” Russo said. “It’s just old. The roof needed repair and the support structures were in disrepair.”

Russo said he expects the borough will take that shelter down before the end of this year, weather-permitting.

The new pavilion is just one of many park projects that’s helping to shape the park board’s “ongoing vision,” especially at the Woodland Road entrance.

“The plan is to refurbish that entrance,” Russo said. “Because the park is in the center of Canonsburg, it has several entrances, and we just want to designate one of them as the main entrance.”

He said they’d like to put in additional signage at that entrance, update the playground area and repair any parking and drainage issues.

“It’s just an effort to better identify where the park is and where the amenities are in the park,” he said.

One of the board’s long-term projects is to replace all the pathways, walkways and bridges throughout the park. Russo said they unsuccessfully applied for 2019 LSA money to start that project, because they expect it to cost about $200,000.

“We want to completely replace the asphalt pathways because they are old and in rough shape, broken down and cracked,” Russo said. “We want to try to meet some ADA regulations with those paths and the elevations for them.”