Historic and popular sites in Farrell are getting an upgrade. 

At Veterans Square, the city is finalizing plans to knock down the gazebo in the center of the park and build an amphitheater. During the summer time, the grass patch at the corner of Federal Street and Spearman Avenue usually is booked solid with annual events and parties. 

“What we try to do is try to be as community based as we can and if you can bring together your community and provide them places that they can hold such events I think that's a plus all the way around,” Mike Renner the interim City Manager for Farrell said. 

The city originally wanted to turn the space into a splash pad for children but changed the plans after considering all of the maintenance work that would be involved with a water site. 

The new plans include building a stage, putting seating in the hillside, adding new benches, landscaping and handicap accessible sidewalks. 

The city will pay around $76,000 and will combine that with a $380,000 grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources to cover the entire Veterans Square project. 

A second project is already underway on Idaho Street to get that stretch of the city back to how it used to be. 

“At one time Idaho Street was our major hub of the area,” Renner said. “We had multiple movie theaters, restaurants, clothing stores, jewelry stores.”

To entice those businesses to come back, the project will fix up almost one mile of the street from Overlook Avenue to Beechwood Avenue.  

Crews will resurface the road - covering the brick roads that have been a part of the city since the 1900’s. They will also fix the drainage systems and create new sidewalks. The total cost of the street project is $2.2 million. PennDOT will cover 70% of the project and the city will cover 30%.

Idaho Street is expected to be done by July 2024. 

Construction for Veterans Square will start in August of 2024 and is expected to be completed by the end of the year. Renner does not expect the square's construction to disrupt events during the summer of 2024.