"As we have worked with developers and business leaders, one message has been consistent: Additional long-term parking is essential before they are willing to make significant private investments in downtown Lebanon."
That's Mayor Sherry Capello, explaining in July why a five-level, $2 million parking garage matters more to the city's future than either of the two ribbon-cuttings Lebanon already held this year. One of those ribbon-cuttings happened at Coleman Memorial Park in June. The other happened at Southwest Park in September. Both took roughly a year from announcement to opening day. The garage only got its funding commitment this summer, and it doesn't have a groundbreaking date yet.
If you live here, you've probably noticed the parks moving faster than downtown. This is why.
Two First-In-The-County Projects, One Summer
Lebanon's dog park opened at Coleman Memorial Park on June 6, on the footprint of the old Gingrich Memorial Pool, which was demolished back in 2021 and sat empty ever since. The city announced plans in January 2025, broke ground later that year, and pushed through weather delays and equipment shipping problems before the June opening. York-based YSM Landscape Architects designed the roughly 55,000-square-foot space, which splits into sections for small and large dogs. City residents pay $30 a year for up to two dogs, non-residents pay $45, and each additional dog runs another $10. It's the first dog park in Lebanon County.
Three months later, Southwest Park (the one longtime residents still call Optimist Park) got the county's first splash pad. That one was supposed to open by late May. Winter weather and supply chain delays pushed it to a July target, then a startup licensing issue pushed it again, and the ribbon finally got cut on September 2, with the pad running through September 18 for the season. Steckbeck Engineering handled the project, building on an earlier design concept from Rain Drop Products, the same custom water-feature builder the city consulted when the splash pad was still just an idea being sketched out with the amount of land available at Southwest.
Two firsts for the county, both delivered inside about eighteen months of planning and construction. That's the pace when a project has a parks budget, a single site, and a defined scope.
Downtown Runs On A Different Clock
Downtown Lebanon has had incremental wins for years. The Downtown Lebanon Streetscape project wrapped up in April 2025. Karen Groh, president of the Lebanon Valley Chamber of Commerce, points to the revitalization of the 400 block as proof the work is paying off. None of that required the thing city officials say has actually been holding back bigger private investment: somewhere for people to park.
That's what changed on July 17, when state Sen. Chris Gebhard and Rep. John Schlegel announced $2 million in combined state and federal funding, the federal half backed by Congressman Dan Meuser, to convert an existing surface lot into a five-level municipal parking garage downtown. Schlegel described it as a project that will keep the garage's design "consistent with the historic character of downtown Lebanon." It's a modest-sounding infrastructure grant on paper. In practice, it's the answer to the one condition Capello says keeps coming up in every conversation with developers and business owners about whether they'll commit real money to downtown.
That distinction matters if you've watched storefronts turn over downtown without much visible momentum behind them. The streetscape and the 400 block prove the city can execute on public-realm improvements. The garage is different: it's the piece that unlocks decisions other people make with their own capital.
A Five-Year Plan To Go With The Garage
The parking announcement landed about a month after the Community of Lebanon Association went public with its own long-term strategy. In June, Funk Construction donated $50,000 in NAP-eligible funds, tax-credited money that flows through the state's Neighborhood Assistance Program, to fund CLA's new five-year strategic plan for downtown. Lititz-based consultant Derck & Edson and Myerstown-based CHAR Co. are running the process, which covers everything from downtown's branding and visual identity to a ranked list of revitalization priorities and, eventually, an actual paid staff for an organization that's currently run entirely by volunteers.
One goal buried in that plan is worth knowing about even if you never set foot in a CLA meeting: the strategic plan is meant to lay groundwork for Main Street designation through the state's DCED Main Street Matters program, which would open the door to additional state funding for downtown projects beyond what CLA can raise through memberships and donations alone.
CLA president Emmily Longenecker accepted a certificate of recognition from Capello at the June announcement, who called the organization "a steadfast champion of economic development, business growth, community engagement, and downtown revitalization." Funk Construction CEO Ken Funk, whose company has also handled the relocation of Lebanon's city hall, pointed to the hospital, the farmers market, the schools, and the recreation facilities as the kind of civic infrastructure that makes the plan worth funding in the first place.
The most useful outside read came from Richard Vilello, DCED's deputy secretary for community affairs and development, who told the room, "You need momentum, you need proof of concept, you need these things to make a difference, but just from the last time I was here, this is beautiful. Don't take it for granted, you already have some momentum." Vilello has run comparable planning processes elsewhere in Pennsylvania, including one in Lock Haven dating back to the late 1990s, so his read on where Lebanon stands carries some weight.
Where The Two Tracks Meet This Fall
The recreation side of this story isn't finished for the season. Coleman Memorial Park's Harvest Festival is on the calendar for Saturday, October 10, run by the volunteer-driven Friends of Coleman Memorial Park. In past years it's leaned toward the ten-and-under crowd, with proceeds going straight back into park upkeep, and there's no reason to expect this year's version to look much different. The splash pad has already closed for the season at Southwest Park, but the dog park stays open, and it's the one piece of this year's parks investment that residents get to use through the fall and winter both.
Downtown's next visible milestone is further out. The garage doesn't have a construction timeline yet, and CLA's five-year plan is, by definition, a multi-year process rather than a single ribbon-cutting. But the sequence is worth tracking if you live here: the recreation projects got funded and built inside about a year each. The garage needed a consistent, repeated message from developers before the money showed up this summer. Whatever gets built on that surface lot next will be the clearest sign yet of whether the message finally landed.
If you're watching what these changes might mean for downtown Lebanon over the next few years, from the garage to CLA's Main Street push, Denise Bollard has been tracking this market long enough to talk through what it's likely to mean street by street.
