The Eurana Park improvement project in Weatherly is finally underway after council awarded a contract last month on the fifth round for bids.

Borough Manager Harold Pudliner provided borough council with an update on the park project last week.

Deputy Manager Tracy Grover put together a PowerPoint presentation with the update, allowing council and the public to see the progress.

Pudliner said that the contractor is bringing in new fill where the old roller blade rink was and hauled in 100 truckloads, he said.

“They’re still bringing it in,” Pudliner said.

Conduit was extended for lighting for the volleyball, pickleball and basketball courts, and handicapped-accessible sidewalks installed from the parking lot across Third Street to the courts.

“These are all ADA sidewalks going to the future basketball and pickleball courts. Notice they’re all in concrete,” Pudliner said. “That was done primarily because the contractor felt that trying to do it in asphalt would be more labor intensive.”

Paving of the courts and ADA parking lot still need to be completed, he said, but paving is expected to be done this week.

The borough wants to grade the bandshell area before placing benches in next spring, Pudliner said.

“We’re going to be in the process of writing another grant to get the fencing up,’ he said. “Based on the way the prices had come in for this project, the fencing was just astronomically high compared to what we had original prices on.”

The borough used a $232,000 federal grant for the project through the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources for the project.

While Weatherly received the grant three years ago, the borough spent two years filing paperwork to get the notice to proceed and go out to bid, Pudliner said.

The borough then had a short window to bid the project and dealt with bids coming in much higher than anticipated.

On the last round of bidding, Sargent Enterprises Inc. was the lower bidder, coming in at $248,760 — still $16,000 above the grant amount.

Pudliner also showed the image of a sign that denotes where the funding for the project comes from including DCNR Bureau of Recreation and Conservation Keystone Recreation, Park and Conservation Fund and the Pasco L. Schiavo Memorial Fund of the Luzerne Foundation.