'Diamond in the rough'
EVANS CITYFor a community with a veritable wealth of history, it can be hard to look to the future.In Evans City, however, elected officials hope to meld the two, seizing the past and finding ways to attract residents and businesses for years to come.Borough council in November retained Downtown Redevelopment Services to aid it in revitalizing Main Street and the surrounding environment. Mayor Dean Zinkhann said that, while he's been in that position for a decade, he doesn't know of any similar undertakings to refresh the borough's appearance.It's going to be a decent amount of work, said Council President Cheri Deener, and it won't happen quickly. Revitalizing Evans City will require input from not only its residents but from surrounding communities before a plan is even formalized.“We have a lot of legwork to do,” she said. “And when I say 'we,' I mean getting the community involved as well.”Council members met with Ben Levenger, the redevelopment service's president, Wednesday to talk about ways to attack the problem of refreshing the borough's appearance and attracting people to the town. Coming up with ways in which the borough could improve required a fair amount of soul searching.“You need to create a baseline,” Levenger said. “You need to identify where you're at as a community — what you're experiencing, what your problems are.”One such problem is the perceived lack of a “draw” into the borough. Although Levenger called Evans City a “diamond in the rough,” that is less a benefit than a detriment: The borough doesn't pop out toward people; it has to be found.“I don't think you have the draw into the community,” Levenger said. “And people who are coming here, there is typically a reason — they know somebody who lives here, who works here. Nobody's going, 'You know what, kids? This weekend let's go to Evans City.'”
Another weakness council and Levenger identified is something they hope can turn into a strength: the amount of traffic that flows through Route 68. Councilwoman Diana Zoelle estimated roughly 11,000 cars pass through the borough's Main Street daily.While that can pose some trouble to residents and businesses alike, Zoelle argued the borough would benefit if Evans City “could somehow divert them” toward staying in the borough.“We need to find something that'll help keep them here for an hour,” Deener said Thursday.One way to do that, a number of council members said, was to have businesses that attract people to Evans City. Zinkhann said it seems more people are leaving Evans City to find commercial attractions — like a grocery store — than are coming into the borough to utilize its shops.“It's a bedroom community right now, I think,” he said.Deener suggested a rollerblading facility, which would surely make Evans City unique in Butler County. Zinkhann lamented the loss of Viola's, the longtime neighborhood grocery.Zoelle said the borough regaining the Evans City Elementary School and Middle School property from the district once a new school opens in Cranberry Township would allow for some economic development.But, Councilman Norm Nelson said, it's not one thing the borough needs to find or fix.“You have one shop that's going to keep people here, and that's the coffee shop,” he said. “ ... The people on Main Street, they want their businesses to thrive, but people aren't going to stop here because there's no reason to.”Levenger said some businesses on Main Street in Evans City seem to be focused on exporting business from the borough, rather than physically bringing customers into town. While that's a fine business model, he said, it's not what's needed on the borough's main drag.“Downtown is about people-to-people interaction, and it's not about a space occupied by a single person shipping goods in and out every day,” he said.
If Evans City has trouble attracting visitors, it doesn't have any issue keeping them.During the Wednesday meeting, various members of council discussed why they had moved — or even returned — to Evans City. Both Deener and Zoelle said they grew up in the area and knew they wanted to return to it.Zinkhann said Thursday that the borough will likely see a number of people moving in from larger areas — such as Pittsburgh or even Cranberry — to skip the crowds. He noted there are a number of visitors to places like EDCO Park Pool from more populous places who say they came to Evans City because there were fewer crowds.“People are moving out here to sit down and relax,” Zinkhann added.Plus, Levenger said, people know each other and can walk to whatever storefront they may want to visit. While in some places it may seem artificial, that's not the case in boroughs like Evans City.“To your benefit, that's the charm of a small town,” he said.
Downtown Redevelopment Services has worked with a plethora of other nearby municipalities. That, some council members said, when combined with being able to see what has and what has not worked elsewhere, puts Evans City in a prime place.The company has worked with Mars and Zelienople, and most recently started working with Harmony to plan what to do with its redevelopment grant. Although Harmony took a less ambitious path with its grant than some of the company's ideas, some of that ambition is what Evans City hopes to harness.Evans City may not have the advantage that nearby Cranberry, Jackson or Lancaster townships have — that is, a lot of land on which commercial and residential developments can be built — so some creativity will have to pop up. Zoelle said not having Cranberry's expanse of land is a benefit, because of what it necessarily provided Evans City with.“I think we have something that Cranberry will never have — although they tried with their community building,” she said before the meeting. “We have a downtown.”That downtown, Evans City's Main Street, was a benefit elsewhere too, notably in nearby Zelienople — which, too, worked with Levenger's company to improve its facade. And Zelienople is just one place the borough can look, elected official say.“There's always lessons to be learned,” Zinkhann said.Although what can be done is one of the lessons Evans City can learn from surrounding areas, there's another important one, too: how long it will take.“It takes a lot of time to get things moving, but I think if we get as many opinions as possible,” including those from Forward and Jackson townships, it will sit better with residents, Deener said.Deener and Zoelle agreed on an important point: It's not just the borough government that will get things done. They can get the ball rolling, but it will, in the end, be up to residents what Evans City will look like in the future.“We're talking about years. But we're also talking about the fact that there's an impetus that occurs,” she said. “We build up steam until we can actually move forward without all of the effort that it takes to get people to move off center.”
