Dec 19, 2017 4 min read

Our family tradition is to visit Pittsburgh on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. A morning Christmas parade and evening show are the linchpins of the day, but we easily fill the middle hours with a variety of activities.

While an exodus of department stores once threatened to make Pittsburgh a ghost town during the holidays, the addition of a skating rink, additional theaters and Market Square holiday shoppes had a positive ripple effect. (Don’t even try to dine downtown on weekends without reservations.)

This year, our Pittsburgh trip included a stop at the Heinz History Center to check out its new display – a salute to Christmases past.

It included reproductions of Kaufmann’s memorable holiday window displays, collections of toys from various generations, a painstakingly authentic miniature rendering of a Pittsburgh neighborhood and a slide show of the city celebrating the holiday over the years.

To open the presentation, a Perry Como Christmas album cover tumbled to the center of the screen, a record slid out and Perry’s music began playing.

Museum visitors applauded.

A few minutes later, Bobby Vinton’s Christmas album repeated the sequence and another Yule tune began.

The crowd applauded again. I reminisced.

Once upon a time, that impressive slide show could have been a centerpiece of a Canonsburg Perry Como/Bobby Vinton museum. A museum that was never built. It prompted thoughts of a storybook’s worth of “what-ifs.”

Once upon a time, Canonsburg had its own Christmas parade, complete with a craft market. Now Washington boasts the biggest holiday parade in the county as well as a mammoth craft fair to accompany the parade. It attracts throngs of families with expendable cash in their pockets.

Once upon a time, Canonsburg hosted the county’s largest miniature train display. It not only attracted many people, it also raised money for local charities. The train now chugs along year-round at Washington Crown Center, where it draws thousands of visitors and shoppers and generates a considerable amount of charitable donations.

Once upon a time, Canonsburg was home to a downtown establishment that featured dinner shows that sold out every performance. It’s long gone, but Stage 62 in Carnegie is thriving, and attracting theatergoers who flock to nearby restaurants and shops before the curtain time.

Once upon a time, Canonsburg had a thriving downtown, with restaurants and shops, an Isaly’s, a movie theater, and more. Malls and big box plazas eventually took them away. Yet, downtown Bridgeville, with both a shopping center and big-box plaza nearby, has more than survived.

Kudos to Pittsburgh, Bridgeville, Carnegie and Washington for figuring out how to make downtowns work again.

Once upon a time, Canonsburg had opportunities to thrive but failed to capitalize on them. Now, an opportunity appears to be here again. Commercial and housing construction has accelerated. A new restaurant/bar has sparked the downtown area. The Frank Sarris Public Library has developed into a bustling community center.

Canonsburg can already boast of two terrific annual celebrations, a great park and a well-known candy establishment. The pieces of the perpetual puzzle – how to “save” downtown – are clearly there. Now those pieces need to slide together.

It’s not the charge of council, the mayor or the borough manager to oversee such a mammoth undertaking – their collective duty is handling the day-to-day operation of the borough. For a renaissance to work, it must be guided by a person or entity whose full-time goal is accomplishing a positive end result.

It’s clearly time to resurrect the position of main street manager, or at minimum, a volunteer board to guide the renaissance. The continuing makeover of Pittsburgh, Washington, Carnegie and Bridgeville, can happen in Canonsburg as well.

Once upon a time, Canonsburg thrived, and the book on its successful history need not yet be closed. Canonsburg deserves a happy ending.