ZELIENOPLE — With several grants already awarded and a budget in mind, the borough is moving closer to settling on a specific plan for the first phase of its Main Street Revitalization project.

Ben Levenger, a planner with consultant group E.G. and G., gave a presentation to the borough council Monday concerning several potential options for the first phase of work.

These include improvements to Main Street, relocation of utilities and creation of a new downtown parking lot.

However, each grant comes with its own rules about what the money can be used for, making some combinations of projects potentially unacceptable, Levenger said.

In the meantime, borough officials are working to create more precise cost estimates for two possible parts of the project: utility relocations and the new parking lot.

A new parking lot would be built on South Clay Street and could incorporate some of the already existing parking behind businesses on Main Street.

If the borough moves forward with the full extent of the parking lot, it would acquire the six properties and tear down several buildings. The resulting lot would have between 159 and 170 new parking spaces.

Council members Gregg Semel and Mary Hess said they have contacted six property owners to ask permission to get assessments and have preliminary talks about acquiring properties.

They also have distributed leases to the owners of the businesses on Main Street. Until the budget for phase one is finalized, the borough doesn’t know whether it can move forward with the whole parking lot as originally planned.

So far, the business owners and property owners have been supportive to the preliminary talks about the lot, Hess said.

“The community is really pulling together to work with us. The growth is right at our doorstep; you either embrace it and control it, or if we don’t, we’ll be steamrolled,” Hess said. “And we don’t want that to happen.”

With the new parking lot at that location, additional parking would allow for more foot traffic and easy access to all the businesses in Main Street’s commercial district. The borough already has metered parking on Main Street and public lots at the corners of Spring Street and Grandview Avenue. However, a lack of parking, or room for parking, has created problems for prospective businesses, which must have a certain number of spots to comply with the borough’s zoning ordinance.

To address this issue, members of the council recently approved a change to in the ordinance, allowing businesses to pay a fee instead of having the required number of spaces. The money from that fee could potentially be used for development or maintenance of the proposed new lot on South Clay Street.

Since the borough operates its own electric authority, it also needs to provide a cost estimate for moving utility lines either underground or to the rear of the buildings, Levenger said.