HOLLIDAYSBURG — The Department of Community and Economic Development called the Hollidaysburg Borough Council “disingenuous” after discovering that the borough didn’t have total site control to construct a proposed pedestrian bridge for which it had been awarded a $400,000 grant.

The council voted 6-1 to accept the DCED’s Multimodal Transportation Fund grant during its meeting Thursday evening. Council member William Kitt was the sole ‘no’ vote.

The DCED awarded the grant to Hollidaysburg on March 26, according to the PA Commonwealth Financing Authority.

The money would go toward the construction of a pedestrian bridge that would connect downtown Hollidaysburg with Canal Basin Park. One end of the bridge would be located where Diamond Supply on South Juniata Street currently stands, with the other end located at an undetermined location in the park, meaning the bridge would span both Route 22 and multiple railroad tracks.

Prior to voting on accepting the grant, council President Sean Burke asked if accepting the grant would obligate them to proceed with the bridge project.

“We have our priorities and they include, among others, the Gaysport stormwater project, the East Side stormwater project, so I don’t want to see us subvert those projects by accepting a grant that connects us to a project that we have not prioritized,” Burke said.

Council member Clay Gingrich said that he called the DCED to ask if the council could use the $400,000 on a different project. The DCED gave him an “earful,” saying that the council “applied for this” and asked him if they had total site control, Gingrich said.

“The answer to that was yes — which was incorrect,” Gingrich said. “This is a $400,000 grant and the borough was to put up an additional $1 million and then the public was to match an additional $1 million on top of that. We don’t have site control, so it was looked upon that we did this disingenuously to the DCED and they’re not overly pleased.”

Gingrich, who has only been on the council since January, said that he told the DCED that he was “coming into this late” but that the council “would clear things up.”

“Us applying and getting this $400,000 means that somebody else did not receive the $400,000 they could have,” Gingrich said. “So they advised me that, as soon as possible — being tomorrow — if we don’t have the property to do this project, we need to send a formal letter to … the Harrisburg office detailing the circumstances and acknowledging that this was submitted by a previous administration or manager, and we will not be proceeding with the grant.”

Gingrich said that he would make a motion to send the letter and decline the grant money.

According to the grant’s January 2024 program guidelines, any entity applying for a grant needed to include with their application “the entity (or entities) holding ownership of the transportation improvement project site location” and “if the applicant is not the owner of the transportation improvement site location, a letter from the property owner(s) giving applicant consent for the project is required.”

Kitt, who also joined the council in January, asked why the previous council had applied for this grant if they didn’t have control of Diamond Supply, adding that he thought they had a purchase agreement with the owners.

While the borough has site control of Canal Basin Park, the DCED told council that, as the project is a bridge, they would need control of both sides, Gingrich said.

Joe Keller, president of Keller Engineers, said that “we never implied that the borough controlled the property” and that the borough had an agreement with the owners of Diamond Supply that if the borough got the grant, it would purchase the property for its appraised value.

“That was the intent behind the grant, that they were going to enter into the agreement,” Keller said. “The borough didn’t want to buy the property if we weren’t going to get the grant. So that was the full intent and purpose of the agreement with them. If the borough got the money, then you would purchase the property.”

Keller said that they had “initially applied” for $2.6 million from the DCED and that they had sent the same grant application for the same amount of money to PennDOT.

An $800,000 grant application was also sent to the Southern Alleghenies Planning and Development Commission, Keller said, adding that there were “a lot of moving parts to this.”

“PennDOT can recommend that the project meets qualifications, but the application is ineligible,” Keller said.

When asked to reiterate how long they had been looking into the connector bridge and its cost, Keller said it had been in the works for five years and the total cost would be about $3.6 million.

“You can accept (the grant) and as long as you don’t spend any money, you can turn it back in,” Keller said. “I think it’s for — it probably (needs to be) spent in a three-year period.”

Mirror Staff Writer Rachel Foor is at 814-946-7458.