Town Tavern Site Clean-Up Resumes
LOCK HAVEN â After a four month delay, city efforts to finish the clean-up of the old Town Tavern site and adjacent structures resumed on Tuesday.
Masters Excavating over the winter tore down the former Town Tavern building and backfilled its basement. Then a snag, the adjacent former Earl Kennedy Jr. building at 53 Bellefonte Avenue. The city had purchased the abandoned Kennedy property for $100 at a county judicial sale last September. The plan was to include it in the demolition work for the Town Tavern location.
Demolition of the Kennedy site was halted better than four months ago when it was determined that an adjacent one-store structure at 55 Bellefonte Avenue did not have an exterior wall that adjoins the Kennedy site wall. The city ended up acquiring that building from the owners T & C Properties. By that time the Masters firm was doing projects elsewhere and was unable to return to the site until this week.
Ultimately, once the Kennedy lot is cleared and filled, the city will own nearly half an acre of developable commercial land in the downtown. Wilson had said earlier once the Town Tavern/Kennedy site is cleared, that frontage along with the already leveled Heilig-Meyers plot will be marketed.
