Any time you hear of a town that wants to revitalize the downtown area, there are reasons for people get together to form a revitalization committee. Some towns are not that bad. Some towns are really bad. The question is always, what do we do to fix it? Many times, the answers the group comes up with, are to tell others what to do.

Most times these strategies are not successful. People resent it when you try to make them work. I know, because I do it all the time. Public sector people for the most part are in a difficult position. If you have comprehensive code enforcement, someone will complain that they have to do this, or they have to fix that. If you have a police force that takes no quarter, all of a sudden, they are too zealous.

Revitalization groups should look to themselves for positive action, and seek to gain an alliance with the agency involved in dealing with the issue. Complaining is not enough, the key to success is positive action by the revitalization group.

I will use Phoenixville as an example. We had many problems with people standing on the corner selling drugs or sex. The conversations started with, the police do not do their job. “We see transactions happening all the time,” I was told in a meeting. I suggested that we get proactive and start 911’ing these folks. When we left that meeting, I knew that although people said they would call in the crimes, that they would not get involved. 

Before the next meeting, I spoke to the police and told them that we needed a beat officer downtown and was rebuffed… in a nice way. Manpower issues, they have to protect the entire borough, was the reason explained to me. I asked the police if they respond to 911 calls in the downtown (just to reinforce the obvious) and was told that they do. The day of the meeting I checked how many 911 calls were made in the downtown, and came up with a big zero.

The next meeting started with the drug dealing and prostitution issue. I brought up that people have to call 911 and no one did call. One guy got very uptight and said they were the merchants and not the police. I explained that it had to be a combined effort, and scheduled the police to come to the next meeting.

Again, at the next meeting we determined that there were no 911 calls and the meeting became very interesting because the police explained they did not have the manpower to put a beat cop downtown, and if people wanted action, they needed to call 911 when they see it happening. The merchants then responded by doing their part.

Once we had the 911 calls, I could go to work and access the procedure.  Institutional actions were performed and with the help of the merchants dedicating some time to calling in some of the obvious criminal offenses, things got better. They only got better because people cared. If the people doing business down there did not care, why would anyone? Of course that is a rhetorical question and the answer is everyone should care…. but, when you are dealing with public issues, it is important to take a participatory stance.

Some measure, that I initiated to aid the effort, met with resistance. The “No ‘Ho Zone” that I created in a 10-foot interval of sidewalk in front of Ellie’s Choice store was extremely successful in making it uncomfortable for the sex vendors to work in front of the store. They got around it by crossing the street, but some of the merchants thought I was too extreme. Although there was less sympathy for the drug dealers when I spoke up and claimed the main drug corner as “my corner.” So I split the difference and disbanded the handwritten sign and the chalk marked sidewalk and the “No ‘Ho Zone” went away.  I felt that I also, was operating in the spirit of consensus. It was the true meaning working in concert with the constituency.

The same happened with the promotion of the town. At first, no one wanted to advertise what we were doing. They wanted the revitalization committee to work in somewhat of a vacuum. I adopted the strategy not to advertise what we were doing at all and just do the event. It appeared that people would see what we were doing when they drove down Bridge Street. 

We held a standard event, and every Friday produced a promotion that included music and art. We secured a following, but customers kept saying to the merchants that they did not know anything about our promotions. At that point, merchants finally did some group advertising in some regional publications and some subsidized TV commercials. That is when we start to really draw many people to the downtown. 

I think the part that I liked the best was that everyone became a marketing person, and now there were an abundance of ideas. Many of the ideas failed — like an April in Paris promotion, as well as a couple of other disastrous promotions organized by merchant Richard Houck (I gave him an “A” for effort), but they were mistakes of commission and not of omission. You cannot be afraid to fail, but by the same token, it has to be well thought out idea with other merchants supporting the idea.

It appeared that the promotions that would work were more a function of the group process than an independent idea that no one was on board with. At one point in time, I had to start objecting to merchants closing down a street for what turned out to be a waste of time and promotional effort, that actually kept people from the town rather than bring people to the town. That came from merchant Jerry Davis leading a charge to stop closing down the street, which helped a lot.  Again, it was merchants saying what they thought, and securing consensus within and not within the group.

It is the group process and a common sense of direction that revitalizes downtowns, and not so much the government, but more the property owners and the business people in the town working in common purpose.

Barry Cassidy is a freelance grant and economic development consultant. He can be reached at barrycassidy@comcast.net.