EAST BRADY, Clarion County — Two projects here are set to move forward as volunteers and borough officials seek to add to the curb appeal of the riverfront community.

The projects, which will beautify a dead-end street on the riverfront and install a park with pier access and a play area for children, have both recently made headway, spurring hopes that they could begin as early as this fall.

Borough secretary Sandy Steiner said officials expect to hear “any day now” about state grant funding for stage two of East Brady’s Riverfront Park Project, a plan that will construct a fishing pier, gazebo, picnic tables, benches and a children’s play area where Waterway Lane meets the Allegheny River.

Borough officials in 2013 received about $220,000 in grant funds through the state’s Act 13 program, and used the money to begin preparing the site for development.

That work — installing construction pads and laying blacktop — continues, Steiner said.

Confirmation of another $143,000 in grant funds would mean the project’s second phase could begin as soon as this fall, though she said early next spring or summer is more likely.

Steiner said the work is significant because it will connect borough residents with the Allegheny River, against which the town is nestled but lacks public access.

“This will give everyone an opportunity to enjoy the river,” Steiner said, “It’s a project that has a lot of support.”

The park also is expected to better connect residents and visitors with the regional trail system of which East Brady is a part, said Toni Henry, a borough resident who is on the boards of the Erie to Pittsburgh Trail Alliance and the Armstrong Rails to Trails Association.

As part of the park project an informational kiosk and sign will be installed, which Henry hopes will usher trail users into East Brady for meals and shopping.

Henry said the borough also had gotten a grant to install permanent restroom facilities at the river front trail head. That could happen this fall as well, she said.

Those efforts, combined with roadside signs highlighting the trail system and installed by state transportation workers, make now an exciting time to be working to expand the region’s recreational trail system, Henry said. She also helps organize volunteers who work to routinely clean and clear the trail system.

“All these groups are kind of interlaced with each other,” she said. “(East Brady) borough has been very cooperative, and we don’t find that in other towns as much.”

A third project, bridge enhancement pitched by the East Brady Area Development Corp., got good news Wednesday when its plans were approved by borough council.

“We’re just trying to enhance the property and make it look better,” said Dawn Weibel of the project site, which is at the end of the former Route 68.

The road, which used to connect to the East Brady Bridge, is now a dead end and needs landscaping work and plantings to beautify it and prevent erosion, Weibel said.

PennDOT officials handed ownership of the road over to the borough, and the development group plans to use old stone from East Brady’s former piers, dogwood trees, and ground cover plantings as part of the project, which organizers hope can start sometime in early October.

“It’s just an eye sore, and we’re trying to make it more presentable,” Weibel said.

The East Brady Bridge was 122 years old when it was imploded in June 2007. It was replaced by the Sgt. Carl F. Curran II Bridge, which now carries traffic along Route 68 over the Allegheny River between East Brady and Bradys Bend Township in Armstrong County.