ZELIENOPLE — The Main Street Revitalization project is on track for a mid-2016 groundbreaking.

That was the announcement from borough manager Don Pepe at the borough’s planning commission meeting Thursday evening.

He also updated the commission on the project’s three phases.

“This is a big project and we’re employing all of our resources to make sure it works,” Pepe said. “We’ve come through all the necessary hoops and hurdles to get through in terms of submissions for primary grants.

One phase deals with refurbishing the sidewalks and streetlights, as well as replacing overhead wires with underground wires along Main Street between Spring and New Castle Streets.

A second phase is reopening the Kaufman House, which is scheduled to open its doors in 2017. The Kaufman House will be responsible for construction and design.

The other phase, which will be the first undertaken, is the creation of a municipal parking lot on West New Castle Street. Between 159 and 170 parking spaces are expected to be available and walkways will be built for access to Main Street.

Pepe said creating the parking lot will come first, that way people “have somewhere to go” during the other phases.

Efforts toward reopening the Kaufman House can happen concurrently with the sidewalk and streetlight refurbishing, Pepe said.

“There has been a tremendous amount of cooperation from everyone involved,” Pepe said.

The main source of funding for the revitalization is from various state grants.

The project has been approved for two grants, the $500,000 Anchor Building Grant and $3 million from the state’s Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program.

Pepe said $780,000 of the redevelopment grant is being allocated toward the Kaufman House reopening. The overall cost to repair and reopen the Kaufman House is expected to be about $2.3 million.

The borough is also seeking a $1.5 million Multimodal Transportation Grant.

Planning commission members praised the project and its goals.

“Just simply doing these utilities and putting them (wires) underground takes you into the next century,” said planning commission Vice Chairman Greg Young.

Seven properties were purchased by the borough to be cleared for the parking lot. Five of those properties have houses on them. Another has a garage and the other is unoccupied space.

The borough fire department will use two of those houses on Clay Street for fire training on the weekend of Oct. 3 and 4.

The other three houses tested positive for asbestos which will have to be removed before demolition.

For the sidewalk and streetlight refurbishing, the east side will be done first and the west side second.Groundbreaking for the revitalization was scheduled to begin in early 2016. However, it has been pushed back to the middle of the year.

Pepe said the borough plans to celebrate the project with community members at the Country Fall Festival in October.