I started my previous post by mentioning Amara Geffen's background as an artist and art teacher. So let me give you one striking example of the role art -- as worked on by Allegheny College students -- plays in Meadville, Pennsylvania. And it truly is striking, because as you enter the city on U.S. 6/322 you see hundreds of feet of recycled road signs lining the side of the highway.
But you wouldn't know they were recycled road signs unless you got out of your car (which, Geffen told me, several visitors do every day) and took a closer look.
Putting it together has involved not just Allegheny students but local high school students as well. Penn DOT has also been an enthusiastic partner in this project, even helping out with some of the welding. The art serves not just to highlight different features of Meadville, but to hide from view Penn DOT's maintenance facility, which used to be set off by an unattractive 6 foot high chain link fence.
For those of you who might want to visit Meadville and see this amazing work of recycled art, it's just opposite the intersection listed below. Zoom in for better visibility. You can see the Penn DOT maintenance yard just above the pointer when you zoom in -- that's what "the Fence" hides from ground-level view.
Art, college, community. There's much to learn from Allegheny College and Meadville.
Too often these days, you hear about frictions between colleges and the communities they're located in. But my visit to Allegheny College in the northwestern Pennsylvania city of Meadville (population 13,253) proved this doesn't have to be the case. Indeed, the relationship between Meadville, Crawford County, and Allegheny College is best viewed as a partnership that brings benefits to all.
Let me back up first. Allegheny College is a small, well-respected liberal arts school, with an enrollment of 2,100. Meadville is a city with a strong industrial heritage. County Commissioner Morris Waid described to me how the area was stunned back in the mid 1980's when two of its largest manufacturers closed down, putting over 2,000 people out of work.
[photos above show some of rehab of the huge (1.4 million square foot) American Viscose plant in Meadville -- Pennsylvania's first brownfields restoration project; over 20 businesses employing 900 workers now occupy 900,000 square feet of this space, including Acutec Precision Machining and Universal Well Services. The wall art was an Allegheny College project illustrating some of the plant's heritage. For detailed background on the project -- pdf file]
Over the past decade, the paths taken by the city and county in their efforts at economic recovery and by the college in its focus on student "service learning," have become increasingly intertwined.
Amara Geffen is an artist and professor of art (since 1982) at Allegheny College. Twelve years ago she became involved in the creation of an interdisciplinary environmental studies program. And, before you ask the question, the answer is "yes, there's a link between art and the environment." Many of the faculty participating in the environmental studies program were interested in applied learning opportunities. This led, in turn, to the creation of the Center for Environmental and Economic Development, or "CEED" as its called, which Geffen now directs.
As Geffen explained, the CEED program was aimed at linking students with the Meadville community, with a focus on projects involving "sustainability." "CEED has provided a mechanism for place-based education tied to the educational curriculum," she told me. When Geffen saw my puzzled look, she added, "think of it as an applied liberal arts education where students learn by being engaged with the community while working on different projects."
Elise Swanekamp is an Allegheny College freshman, already active in CEED. She's from West Seneca, New York, and was drawn to Allegheny in large part by the school's reputation for service learning and its political participation programs. She's particularly interested in working with area farmers and finding ways of helping them out.
Right now, she's involved in assisting the downtown farmers' market. In fact, Geffen took a ten minute time-out from her meeting with me to go over the design and contents of a brochure Swanekamp has been working on for the downtown Meadville Market House-- the oldest continuously operating market house in Pennsylvania (since 1870). As Swanekamp told me, working on projects like this will help her gain valuable experience. "Volunteering at a soup kitchen is great, but I wanted to extend my effectiveness into the community."
[Photo of Market House. According to Alice Sjolander, the Market House Master, 60 vendors sell products there, primarily locally grown food. The Market House Authority rents the building for $1/year from the City. It's open 6 days/week, year-round. Last year, it generated $188,000 in sales, and is on pace to reach $200,000 this year.]
Allegheny students last year put in a remarkable 25,000 hours of time on service learning projects. Some 60 percent of students participate in community service and/or community-centered learning activities.
But at Allegheny College it's not just students who are actively involved with the community, it's also faculty. Twenty-four faculty members have participated in the College's "Community Based Research" program. One of several examples that Geffen related to me involved a faculty member who recently worked with the City to write up a grant proposal for a greenhouse gas inventory of the city. Another faculty member has worked with the Crawford County Head Start program on developing and conducting a community survey.
Another key element in cementing the working partnership between city (and county) and college has been through Pennsylvania's Keystone Innovation Zone ("KIZ") program. The map on the right shows KIZ zones within Meadville in light red (green is the historic district).
As County Commissioner Morris Waid told me, the goal of the KIZ is for "faculty to have a way to bring their research into the marketplace." Eligible businesses in designated KIZ's can gain valuable tax credits and small grants. They also gain access to paid interns, such as students at Allegheny and other area colleges.
One point that nearly everyone I met with in Meadville made is that the community has a strong "sense of place."Indeed, the CEED program and Allegheny College's commitment to the city and county is evidence of the value it puts on this place. As Crawford County Planning Director Jack Lynch added, "this is also a pretty pro-active place, with strong collaboration between government, business, and the academic community."
[in photo from left to right: Etienne Ozorak, CEED Coordinator; Andy Walker, Northwest Region Director of the Pennsylvania Environmental Council (and former CEED student); County Comm'r Morris Waid; Amara Geffen; County Planning Director Jack Lynch; and Meadville city planner Gary Johnson]
I'll return with just a bit more on Allegheny College and Meadville in my next post.
just a quick p.s. for those of you following my search for that strong cup of morning coffee -- you can hit the jackpot in Meadville at the Artist's Cup, located inside what used to be a bank. With a local artists' gallery also inside, it's a great meeting place in Meadville (it's also where our group met for lunch).
I walked along Oil Creek in Titusville, Pennsylvania, on a sunny afternoon. But if you could find a time machine and go back 150 years, 4 months, and 22 days (that is, to August 27, 1859), you'd be with Colonel Edwin L. Drake as he struck oil right here for the first commercially drilled oil well in the United States.
This year, this part of northwestern Pennsylvania, which promotes itself as "Oil Heritage Country," is celebrating this groundbreaking event which marked the birth of America's petroleum industry.
Visiting this part of northwestern Pennsylvania offers fascinating glimpses into the past. But you often have to use your imagination. In Titusville, once a city flowing with oil money, you can still see some of the stately old homes. But many key oil-related sites in the downtown are just remembered with historical markers.
Not far from Titusville, you'll find the site of perhaps the most remarkable of America's "boom towns." Pithole City, was born on January 7, 1865, when oil was struck along Pit Hole Creek. Just nine months later, Pithole had exploded to a population of 15,000.
Pithole boasted 16 hotels, a daily newspaper, an opera house, two banks, and many oil related businesses. But by 1867, its economy -- and population -- were collapsing, as the local oil field went dry. While the rest of the region continued to export crude oil (production peaked in 1891), Pithole had long since vanished back into the woods and creeks (see photo below).
But let's end on a more contemporary note. Interestingly enough, the very same region which created America's oil industry is now leading the way in developing one potential alternative to the use of oil -- geothermal energy.
Perhaps furthest along is the city of Warren, Pennsylvania (see photo below). With a population of just over 10,000, Warren is located along the Allegheny River, about 30 miles northeast of Titusville. Warren was another oil hub in the late 19th and early 20th century.
"Low-temperature geothermal -- or aqua-thermal-- provides a steady, and predictable cost of energy over long periods of time. ... Warren joined with developers Impact PA and Geothermal Energy Systems Inc. for a project called Impact Warren. ... Impact Warren broke ground with an eco-friendly parking garage. Then, in a move that makes Warren’s system distinct, they installed a central geothermal line that can serve multiple buildings with multiple building owners, offering each of them the opportunity to cut utility costs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. To date, high-end waterfront condominiums, a new transit building, and two mixed-use buildings with commercial space and apartments—several serving elderly residents on a fixed income -- are connected to the central line."
As Rogers went on to note, "The whole basis of the Impact Warren program is to establish an environment with low cost energy that will attract new companies and people to area. ... Moving into downtown Warren means businesses can run at operating costs 20-30 percent lower than outside of the zone."
From oil to geothermal. All it took was 150 years.
"It took some convincing," says Jim Brozena, but the Corps of Engineers agreed to punch two large "portals" through the massive flood control levee that separates downtown Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania from the Susquehanna River. With that agreement, Luzerne County and the City of Wilkes-Barre have moved towards once again integrating the riverfront with downtown.
[see photo below of one of the portals; the flood door can be seen on the right side of the photo; a pedestrian bridge passes above the portal, part of the mile long walkway]
I said "once again," because before massive flooding in the 1930s and '40s, a delightful, well-used riverfront park graced the one side of downtown, with stately buildings lining the south side of River Street for about a mile (buildings still standing) between the towering County Courthouse and Kings College on the northeast and the Wilkes University campus on the southwest. Then a huge flood control was erected. As Brozena put it, "we had cut ourselves off from the river that gave birth to the city."
Postcard image of what the river front park looked like circa 1910.
Jim Brozena for many years served as the County engineer. But in his capacity working for the Luzerne County Flood Control Authority, he was uniquely situated to take the lead in a remarkable project, called River Common, that has the potential to provide a huge boost to the economy -- and psyche -- of this economically battered city of some 41,000. Larry Newman of the Greater Wilkes-Barre Chamber of Business & Industry told me that without Brozena's passion and creativity, Riverfront Common would never have happened.
Brozena took me for a tour of the project site, and we walked from end to end, dodging downpours on an overcast April morning. But let him tell you part of the story in the following two short video clips:
The $22 million downtown segment of the flood control project (a piece of a much longer flood control effort) is being financed in equal shares by the federal, state, and local government.
Some of the key components include an amphitheater with seating for 700 (and standing room for many more); boat launch facilities on the opposite side of the river (also part of the project); and new gardens to front the Courthouse.
But most of all, it will be a place for Wilkes-Barre residents and visitors to stroll, sit on the grassy slopes, or enjoy the various events and concerts that will be scheduled for the riverfront.
Also in the works is the narrowing of the four-lane wide River Street, down to two lanes. This is intended to reinforce the pedestrian-oriented nature of the riverfront area. Other parallel streets downtown can easily absorb the traffic shifted from River Street. In fact, as Newman noted, it should help downtown merchants to have more traffic moving through downtown instead of along the river.
Both Brozena and Newman are convinced that the River Common project is critical to Wilkes-Barre's future -- and given the array of local support they've garnered for the project, many others share that view.
River Common is expected to generate a substantial amount of spin-off activity downtown. The large vacant former Sterling Hotel building along River Street (at the main gateway into downtown after crossing the river; you can see it on the left) will likely come back to life, while a new museum is planned for the smaller building next to it.
The Chamber also owns the huge, vacant Irem Temple (see photo and rendering), one of the city's architectural gems. The eastern portal was placed to align with this building, so that when this landmark building is redeveloped it will have direct access to the riverfront.
Wilkes-Barre's two downtown colleges -- Wilkes University and Kings College -- have been actively involved in the project plans. In fact, the materials used in the project have been designed to blend in with the campuses color palette.
Linda Trompetter and Arthur Breese have taken diversity as their mission. Not an easy task in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, an economically depressed region with a largely white, Roman Catholic population.
Their aim goes beyond promoting tolerance, it also includes getting broader minority representation on county and local boards.
Trompetter, who holds a PhD in philosophy, with a focus on ethics and social justice, founded the Diversity Institute in 1992, within Misericordia University, a Catholic institution in the Wilkes-Barre area. The Diversity Institute includes a consortium of 32 member groups, including the County Commission, area colleges and school districts, and others.
Over time the Diversity Institute has developed quite a few programs, including a very well-attended "diversity camp" for high school sophmores (interestingly, 12 to 20 seniors also participate each Summer along with some 80 youth); a range of K-12 educational programs using the Anti-Defamation League's "World of Difference" curriculum; and, most recently, the Luzerne County Diversity Commission -- a board endorsed by and receiving financial support from the County Commission (i.e., the County governing body).
One of the points that Trompetter and Breese (who co-Chairs the Commission and is Director of Diversity at the 14,000 employee Geisinger Health System) repeatedly emphasized to me is the importance of diversity to a healthy regional economy.
Building tolerance and trust in the workplace leads to better morale, which, in turn, makes area businesses more attractive as places to work. They cited the work of Richard Florida (Cities and the Creative Class) and Edward Hubbard (The Diversity Return on Investment) on the economic benefits that diversity can bring.
But it also take strong community leaders to help make diversity a reality.
What, you've never heard of "Steamtown"? As you can see from the photo, it's not about steam coming up out of the ground; it's about steam bellowing from locomotive engines.
Steamtown is a National Park site located in downtown Scranton, Pennsylvania. In part, it was the "gift" of powerful Congressman Joe McDade to his district back in 1986, despite vociferous criticism within the "railroading community," which for many years had been advocating a national park devoted to railroading, but not in Scranton. [photo shows McDade at podium; this was the first Park Service newsletter for Steamtown, from April 1987]
I should know, because I was part of the National Park Service team that worked on the initial development plan for Steamtown in 1986 and 1987. At the time, Steamtown represented a diverse (and some would say disheveled and poorly maintained) collection of railroad equipment that had been salvaged by the City of Scranton from a non-profit that had operated Steamtown in Bellows Falls, Vermont.
The site of the park was to be on the downtown rail yard, formerly owned by Delaware, Lackawanna & Western. It was far from the grandest in the country. The rail yard's original roundhouse, where engines were stored and turned, appear in a famous 1855 painting, The Lackawanna Valley, by American artist George Inness (see a portion of that painting below).
It would be the key feature of the park. Yet only a remnant of the original was still in existence when our Park Service team arrived in Scranton to begin preliminary planning studies.
Moreover, we soon learned that the rail yard was about to be sliced up, with about a third of it being promised for a new downtown shopping mall. [photo above shows part of rear of the Mall "taken" from the Steamtown site; the Mall still poses a problem, as it is a long "barrier" between the rail yard and the rest of downtown]
Any guesses how Scranton got the federal funds needed to build the mall? Think politics, again.
So it was with that luggage that Steamtown became a unit of the National Park System. But I can tell you from my own experience, that the Park Service has some very talented people, and with the initial infusion of some $60 million Steamtown was up and rolling. Take a look at a portion of the rebuilt roundhouse below (and for steam purists, yes Steamtown does own & operate one diesel).
I visited Steamtown on Friday (April 3) to see how it was faring, and what sort of difference it was making to Scranton. I had hoped to get some hard numbers, in terms of where visitors to Steamtown were coming from, how long they were staying in the Scranton area, and how much they were spending. Unfortunately, Park Service Superintendent "Kip" Hagen (interestingly enough, a native of Scranton) didn't have that information. Park Service regulations, he noted, bar collecting this kind of personal visitor information.
Earlier in the day, Austin Burke, President of the Greater Scranton Chamber of Commerce, had told me that up until 2000 the Chamber had prepared reports for the Park Service on Steamtown visitor trends and expenditures. Burke pulled out a copy of the last report and handed it to me. In the year 2000, Steamtown had 160,421 visitors, 61,120 of whom stayed overnight in the area. Total visitor expenditures came to $8.3 million dollars, or about $52 per capita.
Burke also expressed frustration with the lack of commercial opportunities provided by Steamtown. For example, a local bank can't sponsor an excursion train (note: one of the features of Steamtown is that the Park Service runs 34 "main line" excursion trips beyond Scranton, and many daily train trips within the vicinity of the Park). Again, as Park Superintendent Hagen told me, his hands are tied as federal regulations prohibit this. View a short video clip I took of one of the Steamtown trains heading through Scranton.
But let's put aside economics and consider other impacts Steamtown has had on the community. Superintendent Hagen and Chief of Interpretation Mark Brennan described a hugely successful volunteer program, drawing on Scranton residents, as well as some from further afield. Many are rail fans. But as Brennan noted, "they learn to separate the rail fan world from the real world of railroading" that Steamtown's operations involve.
Some aim for that ultimate goal: becoming a Steamtown engineer. This past year, Brennan told me, there are 70 volunteers in "rail operations" and 16 in "visitor services." Volunteers range in age from 16 to 85, and include teachers, carpenters, two priests, an oncologist, salesmen, and some folks who work within the railroad industry (including an Amtrak engineer).
It's a tough process to secure work as a rail operations volunteer at Steamtown. Training must comply with Federal Railway Administration rules, and includes 40 hours of classroom training and considerably more in the field. Volunteers are closely supervised, and it can take five or more years to get from "trainman" (the initial volunteer assignment) to engineer. Yet most volunteers stick with it. In 2006 Superintendent Hagen received special recognition from Take Pride in America for the Steamtown volunteers program.
Why is there such keen interest and commitment among volunteers? Brennan told me it almost always amounts to a love for steam -- for the power, the intensity, the sounds, of steam-powered railroading. [see the following two short video clips; in the first one I get "steamed" while taking the video]
One other example of using volunteers: under the supervision of a National Park Service historian, over the past two years some 60 Scranton area high schoolers have been helping Steamtown, while earning community service credits.
They've done this by entering personnel records and business documents from the old Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad (DL&W) into the Park's database. In the process, Brennan told me, "many have become fascinated by what they've found out about their own community." It's not just idle work. The aim is to have a database where visitors to Steamtown can look up relatives or other people they know who might once have worked for the DL&W.
Steamtown is far from your usual Park Service operation. It's surely the only National Park with a staff of six professional mechanics needed to maintain railroad engines, coaches, and assorted other equipment. In addition to running a small rail operation, there's an excellent museum and exhibits on the site.
Given tight federal budgets, Steamtown has had to operate quite frugally after its initial cash infusion in the late 1980s when the park started up (and it wasn't cheap to reconstruct the roundhouse, the central element of Steamtown). But, as Hagen pointed out, the volunteers provide a critical "free" resource. He's calculated that volunteers last year put in some 15,000 hours of work. This is the equivalent to about 9 full-time employees -- which adds up to a substantial monetary value.
But it's all attributable to a love for steam.
In thinking about my visit to the Scranton / Wilkes-Barre region, I heard about a number of challenging land use and development issues. But one group that seemed to be missing from the picture was planners. You know, the kind of folks who have studied city planning and often have "AICP" after their names.
Instead, the planning "action" seems largely to be driven by the two major Chambers of Commerce, and other economic development groups (such as Penn's Northeast).
I met on Friday morning with Teri Ooms, Executive Director of the Institute for Public Policy & Economic Development. Started with a challenge grant from Wilkes College, the Institute now partners with nine of the area's colleges and universities.
One of its missions, as Ooms explained, is to bring together regional leaders (from the business community, the political world, and academia) to focus on four key regional issues: education, jobs & the economy, housing, and land use & transportation.
"Our job is to convene and facilitate discussions," Ooms noted. She is also looking to promote interlocal service agreements, something that's rarely done right now.
Yet Ooms, who previously worked in California, is still surprised by the scarcity of planners in the area. "There's very weak planning capacity at the county level," she told me, "because there is a need for more resources to support planning." As far as Ooms is aware, there's only one "AICP" planner in the two counties (with a total population of 521,000).
When I met later in the day with Larry Newman, Vice President of Community & Economic Development of the Greater Wilkes-Barre Chamber of Business and Industry, he explained that community-based economic development is largely the function of the two major Chambers of Commerce.
There's apparently a long history to this, growing out of the collapse of the anthracite coal industry in the late 1940s and 1950s, when this part of northeastern Pennsylvania became a national leader in developing models of community economic development (such as the Scranton Plan) to deal with the severe economic decline.
Another major hurdle to planning is the multitude of cities, boroughs, and townships, many of them quite small in size. There are 40 in Lackawanna County and 76 in Luzerne County. Newman says this makes it very difficult to deal with problems regionally.
When I spoke with Austin Burke, long-time President of the Greater Scranton Chamber of Commerce, about this, he sighed and said "you cope with it, you work around it." To Burke, the problem is too deeply ingrained -- in Pennsylvania law and in custom -- to invest time trying to fix.
[graphic shows division of municipalities in Luzerene County, where Wilkes-Barre is located]
Newman's assessment was not much different than Burke's. But he sees potential opportunities for increased regional approaches to land use -- something that's come to the fore with the recent Luzerne County / Wilkes-Barre flood control project (more on this fascinating project in a separate post, Punching Through the Walls).
While in Wilkes-Barre I also met with Linda Trompetter and Arthur Breese, both of whom are involved with the Luzerne County Diversity Commission, a group trying to promote the benefits of ethnic and racial diversity in business and government. Trompetter noted that nepotism in local government is not uncommon, where jobs and appointments "are often based on family connections." This makes it even more difficult to involve minorities in local government bodies, such as planning commissions. See also my post, Leadership for Diversity, for more on this Commission.
Who's planning for your region's future? Comments are welcome.
