OLYPHANT — Standing in front of a pit on Lackawanna Avenue where he hopes to invest nearly $2 million into storefronts and apartments, developer John Wilkens lamented the impact of a longtime flood zone designation covering much of downtown Olyphant and hindering development.
“This issue stops any new development dead in its tracks,” he said.
Wilkens, a New Jersey-based developer working with local developer Adam Guiffrida on multiple projects in Olyphant, acquired the former Sullum’s Bridals at 129-131 Lackawanna Ave. in 2023 for $210,000 with plans to tear down the dilapidated building and construct a new three-story, mixed-use property in its place consisting of two first-floor retail shops and 12 apartments on the second and third floors. However, despite the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers building Olyphant a $23.5 million levee system along the Lackawanna River on the town’s northern end less than 20 years ago, the levee is not recognized by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Without accreditation from FEMA, the levee effectively didn’t exist when the agency calculated Olyphant’s risk of a 100-year flood and designated its downtown as a “Special Flood Hazard Area,” or SFHA, meaning the agency considers downtown Olyphant to have a 1% chance of flooding in any given year.
The Lackawanna River flows near the lot of the former Atlantic Veal and Lamb slaughterhouse in Olyphant Tuesday, June 17, 2025. (SEAN MCKEAG / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
That designation means home and business owners with structures in the high-risk areas who hold mortgages from federally regulated or insured lenders are required to buy flood insurance and adhere to floodplain management regulations, according to FEMA.
For Wilkens, those regulations quintuple the cost to build a foundation for his building.
“When you go from budgeting about $150,000 for a foundation, and it takes you nine months to a year to get two or three bids in for what would be needed to satisfy all requirements, and it comes in at $760,000 as the best price, that, right there, just doesn’t make it possible,” he said.
A fence keeps pedestrians from accessing the property at W. Lackawanna Ave. in Olyphant Tuesday, June 17, 2025. (SEAN MCKEAG / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
With a background in the insurance industry, Wilkens said his rates could range from about $6,000 on a preferred rate to about $14,500 annually. If Olyphant were reduced to a moderate flood hazard area, the figure would fall to about $3,000, he said.
Olyphant was trying to seek a FEMA grant aimed at working with local governments to reduce hazard risks, but in April, President Donald Trump’s administration, under Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, canceled the program, calling it “wasteful” and “politicized.”
Similarly, several miles to the north in Mayfield, Mayor Al Chelik was unsure about the status of the borough’s $2.34 million in federal funding to bolster its nearly 60-year-old levee as a step toward removing its downtown from the same high-risk flood zone designation. Although the $2.34 million would address the levee itself by effectively raising it several feet, the borough would still potentially need millions of dollars more to address the infrastructure at two of its bridges crossing the Lackawanna River.
‘It’s devastating’
The Army Corps of Engineers finished a levee outlining Olyphant’s northernmost section in 2006 for $23.5 million, but shortly after it was built, FEMA calculated the levee could not handle the Lackawanna River during a major flood event. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation in August 2005, FEMA conducted a nationwide push to evaluate flood vulnerability and determined that a flood would likely bring 20% more water through Olyphant than previously estimated, which the agency determined Olyphant’s then-newly built levee couldn’t handle. The decision came shortly after the corps had turned over the levee to Olyphant.
A FEMA flood zone encompasses much of downtown Olyphant. (SCREENSHOT VIA FEMA’S NATIONAL FLOOD HAZARD LAYER VIEWER)
Plans for the mile-long levee in the borough began in the mid-1980s after a Lackawanna River flood swept through the northernmost end of the town. The Army Corps of Engineers agreed to build the levee in 1998, and construction began in 2002. Olyphant contributed about $3 million toward the project.
The Lackawanna River flows between Blakely, left, and Olyphant boroughs Tuesday, June 17, 2025. (SEAN MCKEAG / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
The borough had hoped for funding through FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, but that was killed, council President Jimmy Baldan said.
“That was one avenue, and now we stand at trying to find new ways to help the situation,” he said. “We were doing the application process and follow-ups, and then it just stopped.”
In a May 30 email provided by Wilkens from the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency as he sought remedies from the flood zone, a state official said the BRIC program was concluded, and the borough did not complete a Flood Mitigation Assistance Grant Program application due to National Flood Insurance Program, or NFIP, requirements in the grant program. The FMA is a competitive program that provides funding to state, territory and local governments and federally recognized Tribal Nations for projects that reduce or eliminate the risk of repetitive flood damage to buildings insured by the NFIP, according to FEMA. The NFIP is a FEMA-managed program that provides flood insurance to property owners, renters and businesses, as well as working with communities that are required to adopt and enforce floodplain management regulations that help mitigate flooding effects, according to FEMA.
Olyphant is now in the process of sending a letter to the Army Corps of Engineers to find out what it needs to do to get its levee accredited, Baldan said.
“If we have any possible avenue to be able to get that accredited, what that will do for our residents that live down by the river their whole lives, is that they would be taken out of that floodplain,” he said. “We are working toward finding a way to take that worry away.”
Wilkens commended Olyphant officials for their work with FEMA and PEMA to look for funding opportunities to get the levee accredited.
“So, FEMA, we’re at a time frame where we’re not too optimistic that they’re going to be the ones that can help us out,” Wilkens said. “We’re really hopeful that we can just gain as much attention as possible to the situation and get both local and state representation — our elected officials — involved to become aware of what the residents and business owners are facing.”
An aerial view shows the former Sullum’s Bridals property as empty lot on W. Lackawanna Ave. in Olyphant Tuesday, June 17, 2025. (SEAN MCKEAG / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
With “the right attention,” Wilkens believes Olyphant could be lifted out of the flood zone.
“Here we are, 20 years later, and we’re hoping to bring some attention to this issue,” he said. “Get the right politicians involved, or whoever can step up and shed some light on it.”
He was aware of the levee when he acquired the property, but knowing about the nearly $24 million investment into the levee, Wilkens said he was optimistic that it was on the radar of officials, or that something was already in the works.
A fence keeps pedestrians from accessing the property at W. Lackawanna Ave. in Olyphant Tuesday, June 17, 2025. (SEAN MCKEAG / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
If it weren’t for the increased costs of building in the flood zone, Wilkens said his building, a projected $1.7 million investment, would be “pretty much completed.”
“It’s devastating,” he said. “Once you’re told, ‘Well, here’s the roadblock that we’re running into all of a sudden,’ it takes your breath away.”
‘A mess’
In Mayfield, Chelik is waiting to hear the status of a $2.34 million federal grant secured by former U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright to improve their levee, which was built in 1968. The grant required a 10% match, and Mayfield secured about $229,000 from another grant to cover that cost.
“We don’t know the status of that grant now with the Trump administration,” he said.
The levee runs parallel to Penn Avenue along the Lackawanna River, Powderly Creek and Hosey Creek. Like Olyphant, Mayfield’s levee is not accredited.
The Lackawanna River flows through Mayfield Wednesday, June 18, 2025. (SEAN MCKEAG / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
The mayor hopes levee improvements could remove his borough’s downtown from its flood zone designation that went into effect in August 2020.
“We have not had a flood in Mayfield since the levee was built,” Chelik said. “We’ve never come really close, but they are going on this 100-year flood analysis, and they said our levee doesn’t meet that standard.”
There are 264 residences within Mayfield’s flood zone that are required to pay for flood insurance with their mortgages, with rates ranging from around $500 to a couple thousand dollars a year, Chelik said.
A FEMA flood zone spans a stretch of Mayfield along the Lackawanna River. (SCREENSHOT VIA FEMA’S NATIONAL FLOOD HAZARD LAYER VIEWER)
The grant is supposed to cover the cost of raising the height of their levee several feet by adding metal walls, he said. The borough can’t use additional dirt or gravel to build up the levee because they can’t build laterally, so instead they would use the metal walls, he said.
A guage to measure the water level of the Lackawanna River is placed near the Chestnut St. Bridge in Mayfield Wednesday, June 18, 2025. (SEAN MCKEAG / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
However, even with those upgrades, based on the borough’s calculations with a study funded through a $51,948 grant, simply improving the levee still won’t save residents from having to pay flood insurance due to the Chestnut and Poplar street bridges, Chelik said.
In 2005, the state Department of Environmental Protection spent $463,500 to improve the system at Hosey Creek and to put in a flood wall system at the Chestnut Street bridge, including installing a trench across the road to mount the walls in the event of a flood and an accompanying shed to store them when not in use.
If the town raises the height of the levee, it would need new flood walls with a new trench, he said.
“If that trench cost, say it was $350,000 in 2005, you could quadruple that now just for us to put a new trench in with new panels,” Chelik said.
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A vehicle drives across the Chestnut St. bridge, over the Lackawanna River, in Mayfield Wednesday, June 18, 2025. (SEAN MCKEAG / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
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A vehicle drives across the Chestnut St. bridge, over the Lackawanna River, in Mayfield Wednesday, June 18, 2025. (SEAN MCKEAG / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
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A vehicle drives across the Chestnut St. bridge, over the Lackawanna River, in Mayfield Wednesday, June 18, 2025. (SEAN MCKEAG / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
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Less than half a mile downstream on the Lackawanna River, the Poplar Street bridge “presents an entirely different scenario,” he said.
The borough has concrete walls going north and south of the bridge extending for about a block, he said.
“What do we do with those? Do we have to raise those? How are we going to raise those?” Chelik said. “We’re in a mess.”
Chelik hopes to use the $2.34 million in federal funds to address the levee and then seek additional money for the bridges.
“We haven’t heard from PEMA in awhile, so we’re getting a little nervous,” he said.
By removing the flood zone designation, Chelik believes it could spur new investment into Mayfield, which has two large lots zoned for commercial use at Penn Avenue and Poplar Street.
He envisioned a commercial use or apartments.
“Nobody is going to touch those two lots,” he said. “It’s prohibitive for anyone to try to do anything in downtown Mayfield.”