If you've traveled through Carbondale in the last couple weeks, you noticed some activity behind Nikki's at the Ben Mar Restaurant on Main Street.
Ground was broken and construction has begun on a new park that is right next to the Lackawanna River Heritage Trail.
The Carbondale YMCA purchased the property about two years ago to be used for parking.
When they saw it came with three acres of land, plans for a park began quickly.
"There will be a walking loop, a meditation garden, and then we'll have some grass planted and hopefully in the future we're going to have a pavilion and a splash pad," says YMCA associate executive director Jason Mackie.
"I think it's great. It gives people another opportunity to get outside and enjoy the nice new trail so it's going to be a big improvement for the area," says Carbondale resident, Sam Wagner.
The construction of the park has just gotten underway and with access to it from the Lackawanna River Heritage Trail, the hope is for many more people in the area to come and enjoy it.
"It's a long trail. You can get all the way up to New York state so people have a place to stop, get some food, and check out the shops and stuff so it'll definitely help tourism," continued Wagner.
The park is still in the early stages of construction and it won't be finished for some time, but the thought of having somewhere close by for kids to play has people excited for it's future.
"There's a lot of children of course, young ones, that go to the ymca so this is going to be really nice. My granddaughter, who's only seven years old, she takes swimming lessons there so I can just wait and see how happy she's going to be," says Carbondale resident, Frank Cook.
Mackie went on to say, "Our day camp has grown tremendously. We work with the Friendship House now and we will use this park for day camp which will be a huge help. Right now if they go to a park outside it's about a mile walk and some of the kids can't do that."
The YMCA has received some generous donations and they plan on applying for grants to achieve their goals for the park. If you'd like more information on how to donate, you can find it here.