Volunteers spruce up Leechburg’s Riverfront Park

Leechburg’s Riverfront Park and its gazebo have gotten a facelift thanks to volunteers and donations from local organizations.

“It came under disrepair, and we had a lot of people hanging around here that didn’t belong here, so we decided early in the summer to start working here,” Mayor Wayne Dobos said of the gazebo.

Dobos has spearheaded the project that began in August. It’s part of his “Beautify Leechburg: Polish the Jewel” initiative.

The mayor worked with nine other volunteers to clean up the park, which sits along the Kiski River behind Sprankle’s Neighborhood Market. He said it’s a good place to hold family gatherings and take wedding pictures.

“Come next summer, I want to promote this. It’s a nice place,” Dobos said.

The mayor said people will be able to pay a $50 deposit to secure a permit to rent out the park.

“If everything’s OK when you leave, you get your $50 back and you’ve got to use the park for free,” Dobos said. “I think it’s a really nice addition to Leechburg.”

Frickanisce Iron Works of Parks Township made and installed the new aluminum railing for about $4,500. Work on that finished up Tuesday.

Additional work, such as adding motion detector cameras and painting the gazebo’s roof, will take place in the spring, Dobos said. A contractor will do the painting.

Dobos estimates the total cost of upgrades to the gazebo will be between $7,000 and $8,000. So far, the project has received $3,500 in donations from Leechburg’s Monday Evening Club, the Leechburg Rotary and the Leechburg Area Community Association.

The money being spent on the project has all come from donations, Dobos said. No taxpayer money has been used.

“We got some donations and I’m begging for more,” Dobos said.

All the other work has been done by volunteers.

Dobos said volunteers used a skid loader belonging to the borough’s public works department to knock down a concrete block that used to enclose the gazebo and to level out the hillside behind Sprankle’s.

They stripped and repainted the gazebo’s upright pillars, and pressure-washed the gazebo and the park’s picnic tables and benches.

They also trimmed the trees lining the hillside behind Sprankle’s, and cleared out overgrown weeds on that hill and by the river. The trimmed branches were made into the mulch that now lines the hillside.

Black Lab Tree And Landscape Service of Gilpin donated some additional mulch, Dobos said.

“We recycled everything we could recycle,” he said.

Anyone interested in donating to the project can drop off checks or mail them to the borough office at 260 Market St. Checks should be made out to Leechburg Borough. Note gazebo on the memo line.