Andy Close
WARREN, Pa. – The Farm Colony complex in North Warren may be getting a facelift.
During Monday’s Warren County Commissioners work session, Commissioner Jeff Eggleston proposed a Farm Colony redevelopment project, with a target groundbreaking date of 2024.
The Farm Colony is owned by the county.
“We got a grant from DCNR (Department of Conservation and Natural Resources) to do a feasability study at Grunderville Land Fill site originally,” Eggleston said. “With delays, that’s not something we want to work on unless we know we have all of our bases covered. That grant will eventually run out.
“Dan (Glotz, County Planning Director) and I talked and a project that we’ve been talking about for a while is redeveloping the Farm Colony into a more official sports/recreation facitily.”
Right now, the facility consists of five fields.
“What we’re essentially asking today is to transfer grant for planning to the Farm Colony so we can come up with a site plan for it,” Eggleston said. “It won’t cost the county any additional money. This just allows us to communicate witih the engineer and allow us to put plan together. DCNR is comfortable with the transfer and interested in the project. This is very much in line with their mission and I know that Little League is very excited about it as well.”
The biggest issues with the complex is that the fields were built over time were not strategically planned and the layout and the amenities in the space are not ideal.
“What this would do is consolidate it into single facitily to do multiple things,” Eggleston said. “We’d like to see playground installation, as well as possible collaboration with other sports organizations, perhaps a pickleball court.”
Glotz also proposed the idea of a walking path.
“According to the consultant, they install walking parks like this around ball fields all the time. It would be multi-use,” Glotz said.
Another fix would be to address the water issues, as their is major runoff from the hillside, causing flooding issues.
“Fixing up the water issues would be huge for the league,” said John Papalia of the Warren County Chamber of Industry, who also serves on the Little League board. “From a league standpoint, we’d still work on maintaing the field, and it would be a benefit to all the kids in the county, a space to share with everyone. It’s not just Little League benefitting, it’s the county as a whole benefitng.”
Other main objectives that would be addressed would include parking, driveway upgrade, the building of one main facility, and security.
All that’s to be done now is for a request to be sent to the DCNR to request a change of venue for the funds, which the commissioners indicated would likely be on Wednesday’s regular meeting agenda.
“This alternate layout makes a whole lot of sense,” Glotz said.
Eggleston indicated that they hope to have the plan done by the end of 2022. After that, the county would seek additional fundraising and grant funding before breaking ground in 2024.
