Jim Thorpe Area School District is seeking the borough’s input on a continuous sidewalk it hopes to build along West 10th Street from L.B. Morris School to Route 903, a roughly $140,000 project the district says is needed to give students a safe walking route.

The project, however, hinges on permission from a private property owner who controls a key stretch of land.

Superintendent Robert Presley came before borough council Thursday to lay out the proposal, which has been in the works longer than his tenure leading the district.

The project would run from the school’s parking lot at 150 W. 10th St. to the borough’s crossing guard at Route 903, filling in a gap that currently leaves students walking on gravel with no continuous curbing.

“The sidewalk that runs from our property down to Route 903 is not a safe route,” Presley said. “It does not have sidewalks that go all the way down, and it does not have sidewalks that have curbing that goes all the way down, which are required for us to consider it a safe route.”

The district owns the sidewalk frontage for the first 325 feet of the project, from the school building to Oak Street. After that, the property belongs to a private homeowner and without that owner’s consent, roughly half the project cannot proceed.

“I will work with the borough manager to find out the homeowner’s name, and then I will reach out to them personally,” Presley said.

The district said it previously committed to completing the sidewalk when L.B. Morris underwent renovations, but the work was never done. The school serves approximately 750 students in grades kindergarten through eighth grade.

EI Associates has already begun preliminary work on the project and has a conceptual plan and cost estimate in hand, Presley said. The total price, approximately $140,000, would cover complete demolition and replacement of the existing sidewalk on school district property, which lacks proper curbing, plus new construction from Oak Street to Route 903. The district said it intends to pay the full cost and asked council to consider waiving any permit fees.

“We are paying for the whole entire project,” Presley said. “I’m not here to ask the borough to put money towards this. I just wonder if the borough would be willing to waive any permits or fees that would originate, since we’ll be taking on the full $140,000.”

Council members did not commit Thursday but indicated they were open to the idea once plans are finalized.

“I think once we see the extent of what’s being done, it’s fair,” Council Vice President Mike Yeastedt said.

Beyond the property question, the project presents engineering questions the borough wants its own staff involved in resolving — including road crown, drainage and how the new sidewalk would align with existing ones on the street. Council agreed the next step is a meeting of the borough’s public service committee with Presley and the EI Associates engineers.

Tom Chapman, a councilman who lives near the school, noted the private homeowner’s cooperation is the key. Residents in the area regularly park on that strip of land, and any sidewalk construction could affect that.

“If they don’t approve this, it cuts half of this out,” Chapman said. “We should probably know that before we really get too far into the weeds.”

Presley acknowledged the concern and said he plans to approach the homeowner early, offering the district’s maintenance equipment as an incentive. The school district already clears sidewalks near the building during winter, and Presley said expanding that work to the new sidewalk would cost the homeowner nothing.

“When they bring out the sweeper to do our sidewalk, he would have no problem just keeping going and just clearing that off,” Presley said, “because our students would have to use it.”

The improvement, he added, would benefit the appearance of the street as well as its safety.

“When you turn onto 10th Street now, all you see is gravel,” Presley said. “This would really make it look nice.”