Category: default || By jt3y

As mentioned yesterday, last week I was in Dayton, Ohio, for "Hamvention," and because good hotel rooms in the city are damned near impossible to find at any price during that annual international geek-out, I usually wind up staying in one of the neighboring communities. (Last year was an exception --- I had a room in downtown Dayton for the first, and last, time.)

I try to pick a different town to stay in every year, and this time, I chose Piqua (pronounced "pik-WAH"), about a half-hour north of Dayton, primarily because they had a street fair on Friday night, and I figured it would be a cheap way to kill an evening. It was.

Among other things, I got to walk through some of the restored buildings downtown, which have been reconstructed through a partnership between the city and local business owners called "Mainstreet Piqua Inc." Parts of the downtown area are still pretty seedy, but building by building, the main streets are starting to come back. The "before and after" pictures on display were startling.

The next project the city plans to tackle is the Fort Piqua Hotel, a big old gothic five-story pile of a building right at one of the city's major intersections. Right now, it's boarded up and deteriorating, having been mostly vacant for nearly 20 years, but the city envisions it as the new home of the public library, commercial offices and stores.

They also want to restore the hotel ballroom for use by community groups, and I suppose for weddings and other occasions. Having seen the other successes in Piqua, I have no doubt they'll make it happen.

. . .

I couldn't help but think of the Penn-McKee Hotel when I looked at the Fort Piqua Hotel. The Penn-McKee is about 40 years newer, in the same or better physical condition as the Fort Piqua, and perhaps even more eminently developable --- for one thing, unlike the Fort Piqua, it's got plenty of parking nearby. It also has the Palisades and the McKees Point Marina to generate traffic. Why is there no community plan for saving this asset?

Or what about the old Eagles on Market Street, currently slated for demolition --- and which has just been named one of the most endangered local landmarks by a group of historic preservationists?

If we tear down the Eagles --- a mansion built in the 1880s --- what's going to take its place? Another weedy vacant lot, like the one where the Memorial Theater once stood. That lot at the corner of Market and Fifth has been "available for development" for more than 20 years now.

. . .

Meanwhile, back at the Piqua "Taste of the Arts" street fair, young and old, black and white, were gathered Friday night to eat, shop and listen to music. Little kids drew pictures on the sidewalks with chalk, teen-agers huddled in doorways and made out, young couples pushed babies in strollers.

At one of the street, a Frank Sinatra impersonator was holding court, backed by a big band combo. At the other, a folk guitarist was improvising songs to the amusement of the bystanders. Parking was almost impossible; Piqua has about 20,000 residents, and it seemed like half of them were downtown.

As I munched an ice-cream cone, I couldn't help but wonder why groups like the Mon-Yough Chamber of Commerce (excuse me, the "Regional Business Alliance"), the Downtown McKeesport Association, and others aren't working in a public-private partnership similar to Mainstreet Piqua.

. . .

As far as I can tell, many of our regional business leaders scraped McKeesport from their feet several years ago and haven't looked back. Despite McKeesport's location at the center of the Mon Valley, their world revolves around the strip malls and sprawl of White Oak and West Mifflin. More's the pity.

Oh, sure, there are "events" staged in the city from time to time, like the "Salute to Santa" parade, or the annual Good Neighbor Fair on Fifth Avenue, but there's no long-term community effort to plan the city's future, and then carry out that plan.

How come Piqua can work together on development, and we can't?

Piqua's population is only a few thousand less than Our Fair City's. A major employer, Aerovent Corp., left town several years ago. Piqua has several big shopping malls on its outskirts which undoubtedly hurt its downtown business district, and it's near Cincinnati and Columbus, which have probably drained some of its young people away.

Sure, being out in the country, Piqua doesn't have the kind of urban problems (absentee landlords, for instance) that Mon Valley cities have, but it also isn't part of a major metropolitan area, nor does it have anything like the suburban population base around McKeesport. It also doesn't have things like a symphony orchestra, a major regional library and city park, and civic institutions like the YMCA.

In other words, McKeesport has bigger challenges than Piqua --- but it also has bigger opportunities.

. . .

If a private-public partnership can rebuild downtown Piqua, nothing should be stopping us in McKeesport. It would be nice to see some real bricks-and-mortar action out of our regional chambers of commerce and business associations.

Luncheons are nice, but seeing some positive redevelopment activity would be nicer in the long term.

After all, if we got some decent restaurants open downtown, along with some retail activity, working-class residential housing, and some nightlife, I could buy my own damned lunch.