Community Revitalization Desktop Guide

the Pennsylvania Downtown Center, to run four sessions starting in January and ending in March 2001. The response was overwhelming: organizers anticipated a maximum of 100 people at the ﬁrst meeting, but 350 people attended and shared their perception of the downtown district and how they would like to see it change by 2010. By the end of the four sessions, over 1,000 residents and business owners had contributed to the visioning process and they had established a nonproﬁt, the Diamond City Partnership, to implement six strategies: 1. Create a formal downtown-driven development plan to keep downtown clean and safe 2. Provide downtown with professional, ongoing management through a voluntary Business Improvement District 3. Hire a downtown manager and facilitate business development and promotion 4. Mend the rift between town and gown 5. Create a downtown residents association to organize residents around neighborhood issues 6. Preserve and protect older buildings and historic urban fabric The ﬁrst tangible outcome from the visioning session was to create a virtual BID by soliciting contributions from business leaders to provide supplementary cleaning to clean up the mess and dirt that had become part of the downtown experience. The group also obtained a state Land Use Planning and Technical Assistance Program (LUPTAP) grant for a market study and business plan so that every deal to redevelop the downtown would be grounded in the realities of this plan. In 2003, Mayor Tom Leighton takes ofﬁce and Adopts Action Plan. Mayor Leighton, who had participated in the visioning process, adopted the Diamond City Partnership approach and an “I Believe” campaign to counter skepticism that things could really improve. He vowed to stop speculative demolition and to put working streetlights back on downtown streets. He began by building bridges and meeting with the city’s two downtown universities, which had seemingly experienced a negative relationship with the last Mayor. Plan B – Building a Movie Theater on a Better Site with a Professional Developer. In November of 2003, the Mayor-elect called a meeting with the Chamber and other downtown leadership groups. He asked for help solving his inherited downtown challenges: the vacant call center building, the large hole in the ground, and the defaulted lease with R/C Theaters. The Chamber contacted R/C Theaters and asked if they would be willing to renegotiate the defaulted lease and participate in a revised development if the city were not the developer. R/C agreed, but only on the condition that the movie theater not be an isolated development, but part of a larger plan allowing the theater to beneﬁt from synergies with its neighbors. As a result, the Chamber and City came up with what would become known as “Plan B,” and they called in the State CAT team to help them make it a reality. CAT was already providing the City with guidance on its ﬁnancial recovery plan so the relationship was already in place. The CAT team, the City and the Chamber began working as a single team. The plan for this development, known as Northampton & Main, grew directly from the ﬁndings of the Diamond City Partnership’s 2003 market study and downtown design visioning sessions. The goal was to create an “extroverted” project that stimulated pedestrian activity and ancillary development in the surrounding area. The site for the theater was moved around the corner to a vacant lot on a block that was once a busy retail cross street. Five vacant buildings were restored rather than demolished and were incorporated into a mixed-use inﬁll development anchored by the theater. Plan B ended up as a 145,000 square foot urban mixed-use entertainment-based commercial and residential development located in the heart of Downtown Wilkes-Barre. In addition to the 14-screen multiplex, the project includes approximately 30,000 square feet of commercial space and over 20 residential loft units in a mix of new construction and historic buildings, along with streetscape and infrastructure improvements and 85 parking spaces under the theater. The new movie theater opened in June 2006 and has exceeded its sales goals since that time. Project development and construction costs were $31 million. R/C Theatre agreed to pay a market rent, together with Common Area Maintenance (“CAM”) reimbursements. The Greater Wilkes-Barre Development Corporation provided an equity contribution of $10.5 million. The State contributed $7.87 million, Luzerne County provided $2.5 million and the City of Wilkes-Barre provided $695,000. Local banks privately ﬁnanced $9 million. CAT’s ability to secure a $1 million grant from PHFA for the housing component of this project made the project a reality. Filling in the Hole. The Mayor-elect and Chamber met with the Governor and the CAT team not only to discuss the movie theater deal but also to talk about the hole in the ground that was the original site of the movie theater. The Governor had passed a Downtown Location Law and the CAT team had heard that the suburban ofﬁce space lease of the Ofﬁce of Disability Determination within the region’s Labor and Industry Ofﬁces would expire in May 2005. The CAT team contacted State General Services Secretary Donald T. Cunningham Jr. and, although the square footage costs were higher in town, he agreed – based on the economic development justiﬁcation provided by CAT and by DCED Secretary Dennis Yablonsky – to relocate the state leases to the new downtown building in June 2004. This plan would remove an embarrassing eyesore and bring 250 new workers downtown each day. The new ofﬁce opened in June 2005 and had a tremendous psychological impact when downtown merchants and residents saw 250 more people going out to lunch and running errands downtown. The L&I employees identiﬁed parking as a requirement for their relocation. The State brought $5.3 million in Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program money to the table and accepted as a match Labor and Industry’s lease of 250 parking spaces. Rather than building a standard parking lot, the city plans to build an Intermodal Center that provides parking, a bus terminal and taxi hub. The hub will centralize all of the city’s transportation, clearing buses and taxies from Public Square, making it safer for pedestrians, and creating more room for public parking near businesses on the Square. Two Colleges / One Barnes & Noble Bookstore. In 2004, the Diamond City Partnership and the City launched the Downtown/Collegetown Initiative. The goal was to work in partnership with King’s College and Wilkes University to bridge the town/gown divide and discover how the city could work with the University and College to improve quality of life on campus and in downtown. By February of 2006, the process resulted in a proposal for the two colleges GOAL FOUR: APPLY STRATEGIES THAT WORK Wilkes-Barre 66

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Community Revitalization Desktop Guide

PA Community Revitalization Desktop Guide Table of Contents How To Attract High Impact Investment to Core Communities Goal One: Choose One Asset-Rich Redevelopment Area Interviews with Pennsylvania Mayors Goal Two: Prepare Redevelopment Area for Market Interviews with Developers who Have Invested in Pennsylvania Cities and Towns Goal Three: Welcome Investment Interviews with Developers who Have Invested in Pennsylvania Cities and Towns Goal Four: Apply Strategies That Work Conclusion

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