15-05-2025
Johnstown City Council holds work session on Central Park Project
JOHNSTOWN, Pa. (WTAJ)– Before the regularly scheduled monthly meeting Wednesday night, the Johnstown City Council held a work session for the Central Park Renovation Project.
The project has received criticism from community members and current and former council members. As the project inches closer to the bidding process, which council members had hoped to accomplish by August, there's a new firm taking over the project.
'Scape Design disassociated themselves with the city,' said City Manager Art Martynuska. 'We got the official word from them on March 31, and CJL Engineering was always a sub, but now they became the prime.'
Now CJL has proposed what Martynuska describes as minor changes to the original design, with changes to lighting, walkways and where the Christmas tree will sit during Light Up Night.
'The original plan from Scape required the tree to be in the corner of the park, we thought that, from a public appearance perspective, it would be best in the center of the park.'
But not everyone on the council agrees with the changes.
'It does not need to be in the center of the park,' Council Member Laura Huchel said. 'There's no safety concern with the tree being in the location that Scape originally planned.'
Huchel said that CJL is a great local company, but that they were not directly involved in the public outreach process that helped form the plan. This, she said, could potentially set the project back even longer.
'The fact that we are moving back to the design phase of the project by saying 'oh we had a few changes we're just going to put a few more in,' we're effectively going back a year in the process,' Huchel said that he is still confident that the project will remain on track and is hopeful that it will come in under budget.
'The original plan was calling for about 6 million dollars; we hope to be around that same amount, if not lower,' Martynuska said.
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