LACKAWANNA COUNTY (WBRE/WYOU) — A popular resort area in Northeastern Pennsylvania is looking to make some changes. 28/22 News went out to find out more on how Montage Mountain is planning for the future.
The Montage Mountain area offers a lot to Northeastern Pennsylvania, such as skiing, shopping, places to eat, and places to watch baseball games and concerts. But the tourist destination is also facing some lingering issues.
Wednesday's Lackawanna County commissioner's meeting highlighted a new study weighing these challenges and a plan for the future, with the area's roadways taking center stage.
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"One of the major issues is obviously the traffic. When there are events, when there's concerts, there's baseball games, people going up to the ski slope, when people are going up to the water slides and things like that. So, possibly looking at implementing new traffic patterns, new signage. Big projects, trying to find a way to widen the road," explained Lackawanna County Commissioner Bill Gaughan.
According to the study, widening Montage Mountain Road would cost upwards of $3 million.
The Shoppes at Montage also have several vacant retail spaces, making economic development a high priority.
"There's a lot of vacancies up there, so how do we promote the mountain to a broader spectrum of people across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, across the East Coast? Reinvigorating that shopping center is gonna be very important in terms of tenanting, but also in the other sort of investments," said Commissioner Gaughan.
Brian Licari, vice president of Econsult Solutions, and his team were chosen by the county to conduct the study.
"There's not one thing that's gonna sort of move the needle. You have to implement a lot of different elements related to the real estate market, related to marketing and branding, related to investments in the public realm and so these are recommendations and sort of implementation that will need to happen over a long period of time," said Licari.
Licari says Montage Mountain could be successful if community stakeholders coordinate efforts.
"Montage Mountain needs to tell its story both locally, regionally, but also nationally," Licari continued.
The Lackawanna County Board of Commissioners is in the process of setting up a committee of community stakeholders to implement these changes.
"We're going to look at every one of these recommendations. There's 23 in total and we're gonna see which ones we can implement quickly and really get to work on. The last thing we want to do is have a study put on the shelf that gathers dust," Commissioner Gaughan stated.
Commissioner Gaughan says there's no timetable on the project, but the committee hopes to get it done as soon as possible.
