SCRANTON — Walkability in one Scranton neighborhood took a step forward with completion of a sidewalk streetscape project.
City officials on Monday held a ceremonial ribbon-cutting on the recent completion of a $700,000 project that installed new sidewalks, curbs and disabled-accessible curb-cut ramps and the planting of 19 trees in the walkways of the 300, 400 and 500 blocks of Cedar Avenue in South Scranton, between Orchard and Alder streets.
Scranton Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti applauds after a ribbon cutting ceremony announcing the streetscape improvement of Cedar Ave. in South Scranton on Monday, June 1, 2026. (SEAN MCKEAG/STAFF PHOTO)
Most of the new trees are lilacs, which when in bloom will give off a floral scent, and a few others are honey locusts, said city Business Administrator Eileen Cipriani.
The project stems from a 2023 connectivity study, which has also been called a walkability study, and that proposed numerous ways to improve pedestrian safety and traffic flow.
“We are cutting the ribbon on our first (completed) streetscape. We’ve been talking about these streetscapes, street safety, for years now. This is first set where we’re actually finished with the project,” Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti said.
Other streetscape upgrades underway include:
A new West Scranton gateway, along a 500-foot-long stretch of North Main Avenue between Euclid Avenue and West Gibson Street, involves installation of new sidewalks and curbs, period lighting, a decorative stone retaining wall, the planting of trees, traffic control, pavement restoration and related work.
Work around Lackawanna County Courthouse Square has excavation taking place under various streetscape overhauls that involve improvements to utilities and old vaults under sidewalks, mainly on the streets surrounding the square.
On Lackawanna/Jefferson avenues, construction in the 600 block of Lackawanna Avenue and extending along Jefferson Avenue to Biden Street, involves: reinforcing the approximately 15-foot-tall, curved retaining wall spanning the block between the Radisson and the Station Center building at 600 Lackawanna Ave.; repairing the smaller, shorter retaining wall near where a bus shelter hut was stationed, where Jefferson meets Lackawanna Avenue; replacing sidewalks and curbs on both sides of the streets, from the Biden Expressway and around the bend to the intersection of Adams and Cedar avenues; installing period lighting; and planting trees.
All of the projects in main traffic corridors have been in the planning and procedural pipelines for some time.
The city funded the Cedar Avenue project with federal American Rescue Plan Act dollars. Not necessarily as complicated as the other projects underway, the Cedar Avenue work still took a lot of planning before a shovel went into the ground and a lot of funding to pay for it.
“This is a great example, in terms of dollars, of why these things are hard to do,” Cognetti said. “It is so expensive to fix this infrastructure. We wish that we could do streetscapes on every single street,” but funding is limited.
“As time goes on, we want to be able to do more,” Cognetti said. “We are always proud to be able to make Scranton safer.”