Crafton community weighs future use of South Linden Avenue land
Crafton residents will get an opportunity next month to weigh in on the future use of 5.25 acres of land on South Linden Avenue.
The property, a portion of which is owned by the Borough of Crafton and the rest by the Carlynton School District, has historically been used for recreational purposes. A 4-acre portion of the land, purchased by the school district in the 1920s, has been used as an athletic field of one kind or another for decades.
Carlynton High School’s baseball team uses it to practice and play its games there, and the high school girls soccer team also uses it for practice. In addition, the Carlynton Little Cougars youth football team practices there as well.
In 1999, the school district sold a 1.25-acre portion of the property, near the intersection of Steuben Street and South Linden Avenue, to the borough for $1. The borough currently operates Crafton Mini Golf there.
According to the 1999 agreement, the borough cannot sell the property it purchased from the school district and can only use it for municipal purposes, such as mini golf. In addition, the school district can reclaim the property at any time, as long as it gives the borough one year’s notice.
The entire 5.25 acres nearly changed hands earlier this decade, as a developer expressed interest in converting the property to a GetGo gas station and convenience store, but that project never materialized in the face of strong community opposition. Several years earlier, in 2017, according to information on the borough’s “Imagine Linden” web page, another developer offered to purchase the property for $3.5 million to build a gas station and small strip mall.
More recently, questions have emerged regarding the long-term use of the property, particularly given that both the school district and the borough continue to face long-term fiscal pressures. Those questions have prompted both entities to reach out to the community for input on how the land should be used going forward.
School district Superintendent John Kreider said the goal of this process is to “get more of a fresh start, and to take a look at what the community stakeholders envision for the use of that property.”
“It’s a good way to re-set and start that visionary process over again,” added Kreider, whose district also serves the communities of Carnegie and Rosslyn Farms.
Kreider said the district Board of Trustees has had informal conversations on how that property might be used but no formal conversations have taken place at the board level. Kreider said the district is set in terms of educational facilities, so there would not be a need to build anything along those lines on the South Linden Avenue property.
Kreider said he has no specific ideas on how the property should be used. Instead, he said, the district wants to see what the community is interested in and what residents believe would best benefit them in their daily lives.
“We want to listen to the community and see what they see as a vision for that property,” he said. “And on the district side of things, we have to take care of the financial side and make sure we’re making good decisions based on the best interest of the district.
“As a district and a board, we’re financial stewards of the taxpayers’ money. We have to make sure we’re looking out for the best interest of the school district at large.”
Mike Tedesco, the borough’s Community and Economic Development director, said the borough and school district have a solid working relationship and agreed that those two entities alone shouldn’t be making a decision on the fate of the property.
“Let’s not answer questions about what the future holds until we know what the residents want,” Tedesco said. “That will help guide us. We want to hear feedback about what residents want to see happen on that parcel.”
Tedesco said the outreach and evaluation process should take about six months to complete. A “listening and community visioning” phase, which will include input from stakeholders, focus groups and residents at large, will start next month and continue into September, followed by a concept development phase and then a concept testing phase in November. The goal is to finalize a plan in December to move the vision forward.
“At the end of this, we should have a good, honest sense of where the majority perspective is regarding the future of the property,” Tedesco said.
Tedesco said the property is currently zoned for community residential use, which is essentially medium-density housing. So, if the property ultimately was sold to someone with designs on building a commercial enterprise, the property would need to be rezoned. A small sliver of the property is within neighboring Ingram, so Tedesco said there would need to be a "level of coordination" between the two neighbors when it comes to future land use planning.
Cody Sheets, a community activist who mounted an unsuccessful mayoral campaign in 2025, said that instead of the school district and the borough selling the property for commercial or residential use, he’d rather seem them “invest” in it.
One way to do that, Sheets said, is by building a community recreation center that would attract paying customers both from Crafton and surrounding communities. That would generate revenue over time, although he acknowledged the current owners would need to issue bonds or secure a loan to build the facility.
The facility, which Sheets said could almost be viewed as an extension of nearby Crafton Park, could compete with nearby fitness centers for business, create jobs for local students and provide a badly needed recreational space for area youngsters.
“If tax dollars are something we’ll inevitably have to raise, why don’t we invest it into something that would greatly benefit Crafton and bring people into the community who otherwise would not be there,” he said. “Investing in kids is investing in your future.”
The vision process already is generating conversation within the community. Nancy Harshman, a long-time Crafton resident, spoke at a recent borough council meeting and said the South Linden Avenue property is one of the few remaining “green properties” left in Crafton.
As such, Harshman said she’d like to see the property remain as green space for local youngsters and that improvements to Crafton Park – and the swimming pool – “would only enhance the capability of using that space [on South Linden Avenue] for the youth of our town.”
“I know that we’d like to plan for the future – that’s a wonderful thing – but that is a space for our children. They are our future.”
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