Mon Valley Initiative charts growth in region
Mon Valley businessmen Jerry Zahand Jr., left, and Jim Davies discuss the Mon Valley Initiative Tuesday after representatives of the organization addressed a Mon Valley Regional Chamber of Commerce luncheon in Charleroi.
A rendering of proposed development in the area of Second Street and McKean Avenue in Charleroi.
A rendering of proposed development in the area of Second Street and McKean Avenue in Charleroi.
CHARLEROI – Imagine an old car dealership in Charleroi repurposed as an upscale cafe with Parisian-style tables on the sidewalk.
The concept is among the big dreams of volunteers in the borough who work to return vitality to the area with the Homestead-based Mon Valley Initiative.
“We’re going to try to make it pretty,” said Judy Rager, a member of the Greater Charleroi Revitalization Corp.
“It’s going to take a whole lot of money and time,” said Rager after members of the initiative spoke about its work at a Mon Valley Regional Chamber of Commerce meeting in Charleroi.
The initiative was formed in 1988 in response to economic decline in the Mon Valley following the collapse of the steel industry, said Patrick Shattuck, the initiative’s director of real estate development.
“A big sense of hopelessness set in,” Shattuck said at the event in Charleroi Elks Club.
He said the initiative set up volunteer, grassroots community development corporations to seek ways to restore economic vitality in that region.
The initiative and CDCs in Charleroi and neighboring Monessen have made incredible strides in the municipalities in the past decade, he said.
“It really is remarkable,” Shattuck said.
The initiative is currently restoring the former Eisenberg’s Department Store, which sat vacant for 19 years in Monessen, and converting it into an apartment building with 13 units.
In Charleroi, it worked with the CDC there to draft an economic revitalization makeover plan for the downtown, which also includes the creation of a hotel next to the cafe at Second Street and McKean Avenue. The hotel would be situated on the lot where the Atlas building is located. The dilapidated structure is about to be demolished.
Rager hopes the plan “will spin off” after the Atlas building is razed.
Meanwhile, the initiative has improved the green space at Meadow Park in the borough.
“We really looked at Charleroi,” Shattuck said.
He said his organization worked with the borough to create a modern zoning ordinance, which was adopted last year, that will help to encourage growth.
He said the initiative also has rehabilitated 13 houses in Charleroi and constructed seven others.
“These houses, they gut them,” said Debra Metz Keefer, the chamber’s executive director.
She said everything in the houses is updated to the point that “they actually look like new houses.”
“And then they help the (home buyers) with their mortgages,” Keefer said. “They’re amazing.”