Wolfe Field Lewisburg Master Plan: What’s Changing?
September 17, 2026
September 17, 2026
On a Tuesday evening you can still find a folding chair set up along the fence at Wolfe Field, a parent watching a coach-pitch game on one of the two diamonds off St. Anthony Street, just past the turn from Buffalo Road. Nobody there is thinking about master plans or capital budgets. They are watching a kid try to find first base.
Borough Council has been thinking about both for a while. In late August 2026, Lewisburg Borough put out an 88-page master plan for a total overhaul of Wolfe Field, the product of years of council discussion about a piece of land officials had come to see as underused. The plan carries a price tag between $16.3 million and $24.2 million, broken into four phases, according to Community Development and Grant Manager Shannon Berkey. That is a specific number for a park best known right now for two ball fields, a muddy tree line, and a parking lot that floods.
What stands out about this plan is not the ambition. Plenty of small-town parks departments dream big when a state grant program is in play. What stands out is how confidently the borough has priced work it cannot yet schedule. Ask Berkey when any of it actually starts and the answer is plain: "We have not started discussions on implementation, so we really don't have a clear schedule for next steps." She added that the full plan will take years to execute to completion.
That is not a knock on the borough. Municipal capital projects funded through a mix of grants, loans, and local dollars rarely move on a fixed calendar, since each phase waits on whichever funding source lines up first. It is worth saying plainly, though, because residents hearing "master plan approved" tend to assume a groundbreaking date is attached. It is not. What is attached is a dollar figure, broken down with more precision than the timeline behind it.
The plan's earliest phases are the ones with real numbers behind them.
| Phase | Estimated Cost | What It Covers |
|---|---|---|
| Phase 1 | $3.8M to $5.6M | Wetland restoration, capping an old landfill on site, native grass and wildflower plantings, new pedestrian and bike trails, a bridge connecting Wolfe Field to the adjacent RiverWoods campus |
| Phase 2 | $2.2M to $3.4M | Redesigned entrance separating foot and bike traffic from cars, a revamped ADA-accessible parking lot, plus a dog park, skate park, ADA-accessible loop trail, and a natural surface trail for hikers, runners, and mountain bikers |
| Phase 3 | Not yet broken out publicly | Rebuilding a baseball field to better serve Little League and adult softball, with new lighting and ADA-accessible routes |
The plan has a fourth phase in its total, but the borough hasn't put public numbers or specifics to it yet. What's been detailed so far tells you where the money is actually going, and it is not where most residents would guess.
A dog park and a skate park are the kind of amenities that get talked about at the coffee shop long before they get built, and Wolfe Field's plan includes both. That the dog park shows up here is notable given what has happened just a few minutes away. East Buffalo Township's Turtle Creek Park lost its original off-leash meadow in 2018, when the property was sold and the fenced area came down. The township has spent the years since trying to rebuild something comparable, and in early September 2026 crews broke ground on a $308,000 renovation there that includes a new gated dog park, ADA-accessible trails, and a paved parking lot, with work expected to wrap by the end of November 2026. Two different municipalities, two different budgets, but the same signal: this stretch of Union County has wanted a proper off-leash space for years and has been slow to get one built.
The single detail in Phase 1 that says the most about the borough's ambitions is the smallest sounding line item: a pedestrian and bike bridge connecting Wolfe Field to the neighboring RiverWoods campus. Pair that with the landfill capping and wetland restoration also scheduled for Phase 1, and it becomes clear the first phase isn't really about recreation at all. It's environmental remediation and connectivity work, the unglamorous kind of infrastructure that has to happen before any of the visible amenities, the dog park, the skate park, the rebuilt ballfield, can follow. That is also likely why Phase 1 carries the widest cost range of the three detailed phases. Cleaning up a former landfill and re-engineering wetlands does not come with the kind of predictable pricing a new trail surface does.
The plan approved this summer did not appear out of nowhere. Lewisburg Borough surveyed residents about Wolfe Field back in the fall of 2024, then put out a request for proposals in the spring of 2025 to hire a firm capable of turning that input into an actual design. BSA Landscape Architecture, working with LandStudies Inc., took on that job, funded in part through the state's Community Conservation Partnerships Program. By October 2025, the borough held a Community Workshop that drew nearly 350 residents, stakeholders, and regular park users to weigh in further. A draft plan went in front of council in January 2026. By late August 2026, council had approved the final 88-page document.
Add it up and you get roughly two years from the first community survey to an approved master plan, and that clock only measures the planning. The building hasn't started. For a project this size, that is not unusual. It is just worth naming, since "approved plan" and "under construction" are two very different sentences, and Lewisburg's own timeline shows exactly how much space can sit between them.
If your daily walk, your kid's Little League schedule, or your dog's routine already runs through the Wolfe Field area off Hufnagle Boulevard, this is a plan worth bookmarking rather than waiting on. The borough's parks and recreation page is where updates will surface first, phase by phase, likely tied to whichever grant or loan closes next rather than a public announcement with a firm date. The dollar figures in this plan are about as solid as municipal budgeting gets this early. The calendar is the one thing nobody, including the people who wrote the plan, has pinned down yet.
Keeping track of what's actually happening in Lewisburg, not just what's for sale, is part of how Teresa Keeley works with clients across the borough and the wider Central Susquehanna Valley. If you're weighing a move near Wolfe Field, watching how a project like this might shape a neighborhood over the next several years, or just want a local read on what's changing before you make a decision, reach out and schedule a consultation. It's a conversation, not a commitment.
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