Allegheny River Trail breaks ground on new Foxburg park
FOXBURG, CLARION CO. — After more than six years of planning, fundraising and rallying the community for help, the Allegheny River Trail in Clarion County organization moved some dirt Saturday, May 2.
The cleared land to the north of the Foxburg Bridge is going to become a public park over the next few years, which will change the landscape of the borough drastically from the the Allegheny River Trail group first obtained the 4.5 acres in 2021.
Dennis Keyes, a member of the organization’s board of directors, explained during a ceremonial ground breaking Saturday that the area will be a public park that connects to the Allegheny River Trail leading to Emlenton. The Allegheny Valley Trail comes from Franklin to Emlenton, but there is a gap in the Foxburg area of about three miles, which the project also aims to close.
The actual park area will also feature a garden, a picnic pavilion, a culture center, terrace, a community space and more. Drawings presented at the ceremony Saturday show a complete redesign of the space, complete with a gravel parking lot and a concrete path down to the Allegheny River.
Although the completion of the project is years away from being completed, the ground breaking Saturday was a long time in the making, and involved many volunteers who worked hours upon hours to get the project to the point where development could start.
“No one person in this group gets paid anything — it’s all volunteer work,” Keyes said.
Bob Jennings, president of the Allegheny River Trail in Clarion County organization, said that although the early phases of the project were completely volunteer-driven, the nonprofit will bid out work to start excavating the land to prepare it for the park. He said the organization is aided in this measure by a grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources for $533,000, but it requires a 20% match which will be paid through the nonprofit’s fundraising.
“The DCNR is the primary funder of bike trails and parks, a large amount of money,” Jennings said. “May 13, the bids will be open and the low-bidder will be awarded.”
Jennings thanked numerous volunteers and public officials in a speech to the crowd that gathered to see the ground breaking step of the process Saturday morning, and said it was not just donations that made a difference. He said people and officials wrote letters to the state and state agencies, like the DCNR and the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.
But the work people did to prepare the land for development was also crucial to the project.
“All of the land of this park and for the first mile of the bike trail is cleared by volunteers,” Jennings said. “We have 10 to 20 people that are regulars and show up and have done the work for the first mile of bike trails that would cost many tens of thousands of dollars if we had to pay contractors.”
Keyes, too, said the project is a huge investment by the community. He first got involved because he has regularly launched kayaks out of Foxburg into the Allegheny River.
“My wife and I have been kayaking and biking here for years and years,” Keyes said. “The more you do, the more invested you get into it.”
He added that he was inspired to help with the project by a friend, the late Art Steffee, who Keyes said was a force when it came to the development of Foxburg.
“Art Steffee was a good friend of mine... this is part of his legacy,” Keyes said. “He built the whole town, we used to have philosophical discussions.”
To keep up with updates about the Allegheny River Trail in Clarion County, visit the nonprofit’s website at artincc.org.
