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Updated 8 hours ago
New Stanton council passed a comprehensive plan Tuesday aimed at making the borough more than just a highway pit stop.
The plan, created over the last year and a half, includes six “priority focus areas” for the council and staff to tackle, including enhancing the “aesthetics” of the borough, improving traffic safety and flow, making it easier for pedestrians and cyclists to get around, and attracting business or recreational amenities that would make the borough more of a destination.
Council was working to implement some of its recommendations at its meeting Tuesday night.
“What we have to work on now is to see how this can make New Stanton a better community,” council President Scott Sistek said.
Central to the plan is PennDOT's new Interstate 70 interchange, which planners hope will open new areas to development when it is completed next year.
“The reconfiguration of I-70 access presents the borough with an unprecedented opportunity to reinvent its core area,” wrote the plan's authors, consultants from Findlay-based Mackin Engineering. “The most important question, then: What kind of place does the borough want to become?”
PennDOT's project will reconfigure how traffic flows through North Center Avenue, the borough's “main drag” that is dominated by gas stations, chain restaurants and a handful of banks, each surrounded by parking. But the borough can establish new building and design standards that would eventually create a more traditional “downtown” feel with buildings closer to the road, less parking and more local shops.
New and better-designed signs in the center of PennDOT's roundabouts could identify the borough and point visitors to local businesses, rather than the messy and confusing roadside signs at the current highway exits. Council members and staff were working with PennDOT on an agreement that would let them put signs in the roundabouts, but PennDOT would not pay for the landscaping, borough manager Jeff McLaughlin said.
Increasing code enforcement — and hiring a zoning/code officer to do inspections and citations — could help alleviate unsightly run-down properties and enforce the property code passed in 2016.
As of Tuesday, the borough had gotten 10 applications for the code officer position, which will be part-time and pay up to $7,500 a year, McLaughlin said, though council had to debate limiting how many hours the hire could work per week so he or she wouldn't be eligible for benefits. A candidate could be hired at the March 7 council meeting.
Matthew Santoni is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at 724-836-6660 or msantoni@tribweb.com.
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