Lewisburg Buys Riverfront Parcel for $1 to Preserve Public Access

A sliver of land no wider than 15 feet secured permanent public access to the Susquehanna River this week after Lewisburg Borough Council voted unanimously March 17 to acquire a narrow parcel at the St. George Street River Access from the Kennys, the property owner, for $1.

The transaction, formalized under what the borough calls the Lewisburg Landing agreement, transferred a strip of privately held land that council members described as tapering to a point. The river access had been partly owned by the borough already; the $1 conveyance consolidates that control and eliminates the kind of ownership ambiguity that officials said could create complications down the road.

"It's really cool to read this document where they're giving us a piece of land so we don't have this future problem, and it's $1," Vice President Jordi Comas said. "They're just doing it for the good of everybody."

Councilwoman Samantha Pearson put the parcel's dimensions plainly: "It's a sliver of a subdivision. He has a big lot. It's maybe 15 feet, and it goes to a point."

The site sits just off South Front Street and draws its largest crowds each February, when the Heart of Lewisburg Ice Festival's annual Polar Bear Plunge brings hundreds of participants wading into the icy Susquehanna while hundreds more watch from shore. Securing clean borough ownership of the entire access removes uncertainty about who bears responsibility for maintenance, signage, and liability at a location that sees that kind of public use.

That uncertainty has roots going back nearly a decade. At a June 2017 council meeting, then-Union County Commissioner John Showers and borough resident Bill Kenny discussed a Riverwalk trail off St. George Street that crossed private land under a patchwork of conservation easements. Two property owners had each donated five-year easements to the county: the Smith family, whose property later passed to the Kenny family, and the McKissic family, whose property is now held by the Aurand family of Middleburg. The Smith easement was extended through the year 2100; the McKissic easement lapsed when that family chose not to bind a future buyer. By 2017, borough minutes noted the trail situation had gone "out of sight and out of mind," with maintenance absent and concerns about liability unresolved.

The $1 transfer this week represents the clearest resolution yet to questions that had circled the St. George Street access for years.

Council also approved several other items at the March 17 meeting. Members authorized an engineering change order of $45,909 to Collier's Engineering for design work on the TASA Market Street Fifth Street-Sixth Street Safety Improvements Project, with the railroad portion of that project proving more complex than anticipated. They also approved spending up to $15,000 on video and audio equipment for the council chamber. A separate proposed agreement among the borough, East Buffalo Township, and the Union County Trail Authority covering the Buffalo Valley Rail Trail's planned crossing at Route 15 was also on the table.