Brownsville students tackle downtown blight
The student-driven revitalization project in downtown Brownsville is credited with attracting a developer who is converting this string of rundown buildings into apartments and retail spaces.
An artist’s rendering of improvements to Snowden Square in Brownsville, which include an outdoor stage at bottom center.
Kelsey Wolfe, a senior member of Brownsville Area High School’s Students in Action Team, welcomes guests Thursday to groundbreaking ceremonies for the stage being built in the downtown area.
BROWNSVILLE – Christian Sesak was riding his bicycle around blighted downtown Brownsville trying to come up with a project five years ago for his high school community service club, never dreaming it would lead to a brighter future for his struggling hometown.
“It grew into this town square project that we could never have imagined back then,” Sesak said Thursday when the Brownsville Area High School Students in Action Team broke ground on a $307,000 outdoor stage in Snowden Square.
The stage grew out of the desire to form a community service club at the high school, a group that would attach itself to Jefferson Awards Foundation, which works to promote public service in communities, said Kelli Dellarose, a chemistry teacher and adviser to the club. The project would earn state and national Jefferson awards, and result in Brownsville becoming an ambassador school for the foundation.
The students picked the stage project because of the rundown condition of downtown Brownsville and the negative image it projected on the school, Dellarose said.
The once-booming downtown area known as “The Neck” fell victim to the region’s industrial decline, and vacant buildings deteriorated over many years, prompting Fayette County to seek court approval to seize them from their former owner.
“They wanted to change the image of the community,” Dellarose said.
Media attention the students received while their project earned awards helped to attract Trek Development Group of Pittsburgh to acquire a string of buildings across the street from the stage project and invest more than $7 million to convert them into apartments for senior citizens and retail spaces, said Norma Ryan, a former borough mayor and member of Brownsville Area Revitalization Corp.
“These kids were the spark plugs,” Ryan said.
Trek plans to develop 24 affordable living apartments at the site, and restore the former G.C. Murphy Building at 5 Market St.
“This is going to increase the value of the next building and the next building and so on,” Trek President James Lawver stated in a news release. “Investors will be able to see that things are happening in the downtown and will want to get in now.”
The stage project begins at a time when the state Department of Transportation is advancing a multimillion project to restore nearby Dunlap’s Creek Bridge, the nation’s first cast iron bridge dating to 1836. The 80-foot-long span is a national landmark and considered a breakthrough in technology.
The local library not far from the stage is expanding and BARC has been restoring another nearby building for a pharmacy, Ryan said.
As for the high school club, it will next focus on landscaping the stage area and maintaining the property, Dellarose said.
“They are so proud of what has been going on,” she said.