Many people ask me “How did you get into the downtown development business?” The fact is that I am not sure how it happened. I remember in the early years it was not really a profession, and it was hard to explain what I did for a living.

In the past I had worked in politics, organizing and housing and I believe that was the combination of experience that led me to the downtown manager profession. When I first started, you could count on one hand the number of main street managers in Pennsylvania. If we don’t change the Keystone Communities program, it may come back to that.

People think that it is easy to do something like lead a revitalization effort, but really it isn’t, in fact it is kind of hard. Most times when you arrive in a town, they are time capsules of another age.  Even if the physical plant of the downtown is intact, the human attitudes and opinions are always a challenge.

Sometimes you have to laugh at the remarks that you hear about your project. “Got your work cut out for ya, young-en,” the old heads would say. “You’ll never get anyone to invest here when one can get a  …% in the market,” the analytical guy would say. There normally is an air of it “never will happen” throughout the town.  Sometimes you wonder why they even care enough to start a program.

I have had a great level of success in dealing with problematic communities, but in most cases, none of them will hire me unless they are in a jackpot situation. I tried to work in Pottstown a couple of times and was rejected. One time I believe the Borough Manager offered to take a pay cut in order to hire me. I tried mightily to work in Coatesville but things must not have been bad enough there to hire me at the time. I think of some of the communities where I was hired, like South Street, after the Mardi Gras riots, and Phoenixville. There may have been some desperation in both cases, but there was a dedicated group seeking action.

Downtown Revitalization indicates that there will be change initiated in order to make things better. Why are people afraid of change? It is not the status quo and sometimes people become uncomfortable with things that they do not know. It probably is human nature… how many times have you heard that “the devil you know is better than the one you don’t.”

Outside people coming to work in a town will normally wonder about some things that the people who have lived with in a town all their lives take as a given. Convincing the locals that something needs to be done is at times challenging. More challenging than the actual task itself is dealing with the people involved. It makes the process daunting at times. Not only do you have the problem in the town, which is many times, insurmountable, but you have the context in which the remedy applied is debated by the locals perhaps with little other than folk lore and gut feelings.

So why would anyone choose downtown management as a profession? It is hard to do and many times, the context in which a person has to do it in, is flawed. The job does not pay well and has crazy hours.

I guess the answer is, that you have to love it. I suppose that is why I decided to guide another town in revitalization. Over the last few weeks I have decided that I want to revitalize another town. This one wants me and I am not asking a town that I think is less than stellar to allow me to revitalize it. The new folks I am working with seek to revitalize and improve their town a little more than the others.

The town is near Pittsburgh and I look forward to helping them sort things out and find the right combination of factors to enable success.  The borough of Castle Shannon has four transit stops and much of the town is governed by the commands of the Port Authority. It will not be a hard job to deal with the town because there are no real imbedded problems; in fact this town has a lot going for it. This is not my typical town where everything is in a mess; this town is in pretty good shape. 

I thought about, why am I doing this when I should be looking to collect Social Security and live happily ever after? I think once you work in downtown management and have downtown success stories, you realize that you are doing something that will affect the lives of many.  You know what you do will mean something. 

Barry Cassidy can be reached at barrycassidy@comcast.net.