Work to restore Carbondale’s Pioneer City Station continues to chug along.
The city’s roughly 30-year-old train station at Trinity Place and Mill Street is in the midst of a $25,000 facelift through a partnership with Carbondale, Leadership Lackawanna and the Lackawanna Heritage Valley Authority. To celebrate the revitalized train station, Leadership Lackawanna and the LHVA will hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony April 26 at 12:30 p.m. at the train station, 99 Trinity Place, with light refreshments and comments from local dignitaries.
The restoration of the station, which was showing its age with weathered wood decking, old paint and a sinking parking lot, is part of a Leadership Lackawanna Core Program Class of 2024-25 project, with group members from the class working in conjunction with the LHVA. The LHVA built the Pioneer City Station and other similar train stations throughout the valley in the 1990s.
The train station serves as both a nod to the city’s past and a foundation for the future with the station used in LHVA youth programming, Mayor Michele Bannon said.
“This was a huge opportunity that we had with Leadership Lackawanna and LHVA, so we took advantage of it,” she said. “It wasn’t on our radar, but since that opportunity popped up for us, we were excited to jump on top of it and get rocking and rolling with it.”
Work on the train station includes ripping off and replacing the station’s wooden deck with a more durable composite decking, painting the station, removing old shrubbery and gravel to make way for new landscaping, adding new fascia, fixing deteriorated roof trusses, placing benches and a railing, improving the stairs to the platform and putting in a wheelchair-accessible ramp, Bannon said. Crews are also repairing the train station’s parking lot that had sunk down at least a foot and a half, Bannon said. The parking lot is where the city’s original train station had been, and it was never properly backfilled before the parking lot was added, she said.
The improvements will also help with maintenance, Bannon added.
Because Leadership Lackawanna’s fundraising efforts exceeded their goal, they are now looking into additional improvements, including adding customizable LED lighting to the station like Olyphant did to its Queen City Station, replacing the cupola and painting two small murals on the station’s closed-in windows, Bannon said. She lauded Olyphant’s $50,000 project to revitalize its train station last year.
Olyphant’s Queen City Station on May 30, 2024. (TIMES-TRIBUNE FILE)
“They did a beautiful job,” she said. “Theirs is a focal piece in their downtown, which I’ve always thought was gorgeous.”
The city wouldn’t have been able to do the project without Leadership Lackawanna, Bannon said.
Leadership Lackawanna “strives to enhance emerging and established leaders’ skills, connections, and knowledge, strengthening our communities, workplaces, and organizations,” and participants in its 10-month Core Program are tasked with developing and implementing community projects, according to a news release from the Greater Scranton Chamber of Commerce. The organization previously worked with the LHVA on a trail project in Scranton last year, and as Leadership Lackawanna looked for projects for its 2024-25 class, the LHVA submitted the train station improvements.
The fundraising goal for the train station was $16,000, but Leadership Lackawanna raised closer to $25,000 through a bingo fundraiser in February that had 400 people attend, said class member Chrissy Grunza of Dickson City. To further reduce costs, local contractors donated their labor, with Grimm Construction, JS Wright Excavating and Nick’s Excavating all working on the project at no cost, according to Bannon and Grunza. Carbondale’s Department of Public Works worked on the station, and Leadership Lackawanna members will be painting it.
Local businesses also donated numerous gift baskets for raffles, Grunza said.
Grunza recalled an early discussion where she and her classmates hoped to raise $8,000 selling tickets for the bingo.
“We were shocked, and we were so humbled and grateful for all the community that really chipped in to help make it happen,” she said, explaining the support exceeded their expectations. “We were so thrilled about it.”
Bannon hopes the completed station will attract more people to Carbondale. It ties into the city’s comprehensive improvement plan, she said.
“It’s all building connectivity,” Bannon said, pointing to the station’s location off Main Street. “Anything to draw attention to it, to make it safe, to make it the icon that it’s supposed to be in our community.”
Workers from Grimm Construction work on the Pioneer City Station in Carbondale Tuesday, April 15, 2025. (SEAN MCKEAG / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
Workers from Grimm Construction work on the Pioneer City Station in Carbondale Tuesday, April 15, 2025. (SEAN MCKEAG / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
A new platform is being constructed on the Pioneer City Station in Carbondale Tuesday, April 15, 2025. (SEAN MCKEAG / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
Workers from Grimm Construction work on the Pioneer City Station in Carbondale Tuesday, April 15, 2025. (SEAN MCKEAG / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)