ARPA-funded project at Mount Gretna’s Soldiers Field nears completion

As the unofficial start to summer gets underway this weekend, visitors to Mount Gretna will notice numerous beautification projects in the bucolic borough that are either completed or nearly finished.

One of the most visible enhancements is the new wooden walking bridge over Conewago Creek along Route 117 near the town center. 

The bridge, a paved pathway, lighting, installed crosswalk signs, a painted walkway across Route 117, and a parking lot and native garden, the latter both at Soldiers Field, are part of a $150,000 American Rescue Plan Act grant provided by Lebanon County Commissioners. 

Read More: (April 2023) PA Chautauqua Foundation unveils plans for Soldiers Field, gets mixed reactions

The ARPA grant was matched with local funding for an improvement project with a $481,471 price tag, according to Chautauqua Foundation president John Weaver.

Additional projects, which are not part of the federal funding, are either completed or will be by the start of the holiday weekend. The work includes native plant gardens being sown throughout the heart of downtown Gretna and an arts sculpture that’s being constructed just outside Gretna Theatre.

The sculpture titled “The Guardian of the Arts” by local resident and international artist Cory Wanamaker will be unveiled to the public this Saturday afternoon.   

While the ADA-compliant bridge is open, completion of an ADA-compliant paved pedestrian walkway through the woods that will connect town to a parking lot at Soldiers Field via the bridge may be delayed a few weeks. 

Persistent rain recently has hampered efforts to get the gravel laid and the walkway paved, according to Weaver. A tentative date for completion of the walkway and the remaining uncompleted portions of the ARPA project is June 6.

The much-needed rain to refill local aquifers following a dry fall and winter are like a two-edged sword for getting the ARPA project completed since the dirt pathway through the woods and at both ends of the bridge was a muddy mess late last week.

“What they’re saying is that if we get good weather, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, that they will have the path and the parking area will not be parkable, but what we’re going to do is park by the baseball backstop (at Soldiers Field) and then they’ll be able to walk down the path to come in (to town),” Weaver said.

“I’m probably going to eat my words, but I think the worst thing that will happen is that the gravel will be down and not paved over, so people will be able to walk down the gravel path. They won’t be able to take wheelchairs, so it won’t be accessible, but it’ll be gravel (by this weekend).”

Rain has also hampered paving of the pervious parking lot at Soldiers Field where 49 new parking spaces are being installed. The lot was saturated during a visit by LebTown last week, so the pervious macadam for the parking spots has not been poured.

“These are pervious paved marking spaces. So these will allow the water to, that’s why the thick stone here, but this will allow drainage down through it,” Weaver said. “There are two handicapped and nine pervious parking spaces here. And then these are grass grid parking that go all the way around the outside of there. There are 38 of those and we’re gonna demarcate them on the pavement. We’ll just have lines on the pavement so people can see where to pull in.”

Numerous bollard landscape and lamppost lightning structures have been installed along the bridge, the wooded walking path, and into and around the parking lot at Soldiers Field.

“All I can say is the community has been so supportive when they saw the bridge and how well the bridge fit into the character of the community,” Weaver said. “We got some very nice notes on Facebook and from community members about how nice this all is. When they see how beautiful this is going to be, the path going down through the woods and the bollard lights, It’s going to be a beautiful, beautiful project for everybody.”

Last fall, an army of volunteers were busy removing invasive species and prepping the ground for a variety of native species to be planted in the winter as part of nine “pods” that will grow into what’s being called Wildflower Meadow.

Completed as part of the ARPA-funded project, those plants are just now beginning to sprout and will grow into a native species area reminiscent of when Soldiers Field was part of the founding of the Pennsylvania National Guard in Mount Gretna.

Other non-ARPA projects at Mount Gretna

 Many of those same volunteers have been busy beautifying numerous areas around town, according to Weaver, who took LebTown on a walking tour of those areas to showcase the green thumbs of the group known as Gretna Gardners.

Areas around the Mount Gretna Post Office and along Chautauqua Drive have had invasive plant species removed and replaced by native species to enhance the landscape of these heavily travelled public areas.

At Gretna Theatre, local landscaper Ryan Fretz was busy laying stonework for the arts sculpture one week before the holiday weekend.   

“The stone you see here is what I’m doing and then I will landscape in between, like fill in the soil but really it’s this stone work around the sculpture,” Fretz said. The stonework looks like a horseshoe around the sculpture based on an artist’s drawing of the finished design. 

When asked where the stone had been obtained, Fretz said it has historic significance.

“The borough has a facilities yard on the outside of Gretna and they’ve got a substantial pile. I’ve been told a lot of this is historically cut stone that I’m working with and I’ve been told that a lot of this came from the old Mount Gretna Inn, which was demolished before my time,” he said. 

The sculpture was commissioned by the Mim Enck Charitable Foundation for the community of Mount Gretna, according to a flyer highlighting the project.

“Mim was a resident here, a strong supporter of the arts, and there was a foundation set up after her passing that was her endowment,” Fretz said. “She had been the owner of East Indies Coffee Co., and all those years she supplied concessions and the coffee for the playhouse here. So she was involved for a long time in the arts here.”    

The flyer notes that the “breathtaking 12-foot bronze sculpture” honors “all who have dedicated their time, talent, and treasure to the arts in Mount Gretna.”