Ligonier Township supervisors want to see some small improvements at the former Ligonier Beach site so the community can enjoy the space while officials decide its long-term future.
Supervisor Wade Stoner this week proposed a list of amenities — electrical service, temporary bathrooms, trees, a post-and-rail fence and picnic tables — that can be easily added over the next few months.
“If we had five or six, ten, tables down there, that would go a long way to making that place usable,” he said.
Supervisors agreed to take the matter to the township recreation board in an effort to get the project complete in the next 90 days. That will provide some services at the 8.5-acre site acquired by the township in 2019 after a flood at the privately-operated swimming pool along Route 30.
How it will be used in the future remains up in the air. A master plan created by engineering firm Mackin Engineers & Consultants of Pittsburgh proposed an estimated $15 million worth of improvements, ranging from a splash pad to a winter ice rink.
Volunteers cleaned up the site about five years ago through a Friends of Ligonier Beach effort, which was replicated in April. Then, more volunteers using heavy machinery removed logs, dead trees, heavy brush and debris from the field surrounding the former pool and in the deteriorating pool itself.
Supervisor John Beaufort thanked the community for years of support and input into the property’s next phase.
“It is now open for the public, you can walk down there, walk around,” he said, though there’s not much there for users yet.
Stoner said the small improvements he suggested will require minimal funds but get the property into a usable state.
“Instead of trying to take care of the whole 10-year project,” he said, “here’s something we can do right now, get this going while we look at better ways to use the rest of it over the next couple years.”
Supervisors also asked the recreation board to come up with ideas for what to do with the pool’s shell.
The township obtained the property in 2019 for $230,000 with money from the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and the Katherine Mabis McKenna Foundation.
The Ligonier Beach’s previous owners closed the pool and restaurant the previous year after flood damage. Originally known as Ligonier Valley Bathing Beach, it opened in 1925.