Allegheny College announced on Thursday, Oct. 10, that it had secured a $1 million grant for the Meadville Community Revitalization Corporation. The grant comes from the Richard King Mellon Foundation, a Pittsburgh-based nonprofit that has funded other projects in Meadville.
The MCRC, a non-profit independent of Allegheny College, was founded in September and was established specifically to aid the Meadville area with economic and community development. The grant will go towards a number of projects and initiatives, such as improving public areas and supporting business in the downtown Meadville community over the next two years.
Specifically, the grant is to be used for staff salaries, market analysis studies and consulting for branding and marketing downtown events and programs.
Andy Walker, who is Allegheny’s executive director of economic, civic & community engagement as well as the executive director of the MCRC, said the grant will be very helpful for revitalization efforts in downtown Meadville.
“There’s been this void of not having a downtown focused organization,” Walker said. “So that was the initial planning grant from Mellon that helped us to establish the public engagement outreach. And, ultimately, this led to the incorporation of this new Meadville Community Revitalization Corporation.”
Over the next two years, the MCRC plans to revitalize the city in three main ways: real estate development, placemaking and marketing the downtown area to both citizens of Meadville and Allegheny College community members.
A number of vacant storefronts and office spaces sit on the streets of downtown, providing a unique opportunity for the MCRC to generate resources for them to be used. By working with developers, businesses can utilize these spaces and bolster the economy of the city.
“We can have buildings, but we also need businesses to fill those buildings,” Walker said. “So we know we need to have some sort of business development, entrepreneurship development and support, and how we support our existing businesses to grow.”
The MCRC also plans to focus on improving walkways and city facades in Meadville. Due to the condition of some areas in Meadville, the usability of public spaces becomes less incentivized. Working to make these spaces beneficial to the wider community allows for better infrastructure and improves the quality of life of those who use them.
In addition, the corporation intends to utilize funds to market and advertise the downtown area as not only a destination for businesses, but also residents and visitors to see as a place to converge and be proud of. Marketing these spaces for both Allegheny and Meadville community members is a large effort the MCRC is planning to embark on, according to Walker. Building a bridge between both communities is a venture that is ongoing, but as a result of the grant now has the capacity to be examined further.
“We need someone on campus, that could be student activities or (Allegheny Student Government), but there’s also Allegheny’s marketing and communications office,” Walker said. “We need a clear and consistent effort on campus. It goes both ways, to invite Meadville to campus for various events, but then also to clearly invite, market and promote things in the community to students and faculty, and make it easy to get there.”
The corporation also plans to collaborate with community members for input on its projects and how they can best aid their development. A number of officials, such as city planners, business owners and the mayor of Meadville, Jaime Kinder, are all on the committee for the MCRC. This is to ensure that all decisions made are ones that accurately meet the needs of the city and that all challenges are fully addressed.
To measure the success of this initiative, the corporation plans to focus on baseline data and other research that will be collected as time goes on. The largest goal the MCRC strives toward is to make downtown Meadville, and Meadville as a whole, successful for all its inhabitants.
“Everyone wants, and has a successful vision for, a successful downtown,” Walker said. “Whether you’re a college recruiting students and faculty, whether you’ve lived here your entire life and you want your own community to be successful and thriving, whether you’re the Meadville Medical Center wanting to recruit physicians and nurses or Acutec wanting to recruit engineers, we all want the same thing. And that shared vision is what we’re working toward.”