Archbald wants input from the community on the future of two mining relics on Laurel Street.
In collaboration with Archbald Borough Council and the Archbald Neighborhood Association, Valley in Motion will hold an interactive community meeting Aug. 14 from 6 to 8 p.m. in the council chambers at the Borough Building, 400 Church St., to gather ideas on what the town should do with two buildings from the former Gravity Slope Colliery at the end of Laurel Street, according to a news release from Valley in Motion.
As the town renovates a former oil storage building on the site, officials are setting their sights on the the colliery’s shifting shanty and fan house, which have fallen into disrepair in the 70 years since the Gravity Slope Colliery shut down. Built in 1913, the Gravity Slope Colliery operated until 1955 when the Delaware and Hudson Coal Co. closed it due to excessive mine flooding, according to an Archbald Borough Historical Society infographic.
The shifting shanty was the building where coal miners would change into their coal-blackened work clothes, and the fan house used a huge fan to circulate air into the mines, providing local miners with fresh air as they toiled away underground.
Aug. 14 will be the first of two meetings, borough Manager Dan Markey said.
“This first meeting would be focused on getting feedback from the community on the best way to repurpose the fan house and shifting shanty,” he said. “The intent is to allow the community members to take the wheel here and tell us what they would like to see there.”
Valley in Motion works closely with the borough, its Gravity Slope Colliery Committee and the Lackawanna Heritage Valley Authority, Markey said. The Lackawanna Heritage Trail’s Laurel Street Trailhead is near the mine relics.
Adding to the historic nature of the fan house, Markey said the building still contains the huge fan — roughly 16 feet in circumference — that blew air into the mines.
“It is a sight to behold,” he said, noting the rarity of it.
Markey said the borough will seek grant funding for the fan house and shifting shanty, with possible avenues including arts and culture grants as well as abandoned mine reclamation grants. He believes the borough could complete the project by 2030, though there is not yet a set timeline.
Gus Fahey, president of Valley in Motion, said his organization had early discussions with the Gravity Slope Colliery Committee with the goal of improving access to the Lackawanna River and the trail system.
“We just thought that was a historic resource that more people in the community could benefit from,” Fahey said.
Next month’s meeting will use a new concept in the planning community called “design, play, build” and will try to get attendees to tap into their memories from childhood about the types of places they really enjoyed and then transition into a more practical conversation about what could go there, Fahey said.
Valley in Motion Project Manager Alyssa Kelley and Roxy Brown, the organization’s recreation access specialist, will lead the meeting, he said.
After gathering input from the community, they will go back to the Gravity Slope Colliery Committee to sift through the ideas, come up with themes and then figure out where to go from there, Fahey said.
He plans to then hold a second meeting distilling those ideas down, potentially with a site visit to help people visualize their ideas, Fahey said.
Gathering community input on how to use the shifting shanty and mine house is crucially important, he said. Archbald residents have family who worked in those mines, he said.
“There’s a lot of important history that’s wrapped up in these buildings that really could be better utilized for the public,” Fahey said. “That’s part of our past, but what do we do with them now? You want to capture that history somehow, but then you also want to make them useful.”