Emily Budney, who serves as co-president for the Connoquenessing Valley Elementary School Parent-Teacher Organization, stands beside her passion project Zelie-opoly, which highlights local businesses around Zelienople. Chris Kopacz/Butler Eagle
ZELIENOPLE — When parent Emily Budney first hatched plans for a Monopoly-themed board game chronicling the borough’s landscape, everyone’s world had shrunk.
COVID-19 had swept the globe. People stuck at home could send each other Monopoly-inspired cards online with just a handful of properties like the fridge, the living room sofa and public spaces closed for lockdown.
But Budney found the fuel to craft an intricate recreation of the borough’s cherished landmarks: General Shu’s Chinese Restaurant, the Little Green Bookstore, Zelienople Children’s Library. She serves now as co-president for Connoquenessing Valley Elementary School Parent-Teacher Organization.
“I have an 8-year-old son, so it’s just great to be like, these are some of the places he’s been, and he’ll have this forever, and so to me that’s just beautiful, right?” she said. “Because he’ll be like, this is where we went and got pretzels on Saturdays, and this is where I had my hair dyed blue, and just all of those things, and the icing on the cake is that we’re able to make this a really terrific fundraiser for our playground.”
The elementary school, which saw its playgrounds renovated by the PTO during the height of COVID-19, will benefit from purchases of the Zelie-opoly board games through multiple local venues. The PTO hopes to replace the school’s “intermediate” playground, which is for third- and fourth-graders, with a new one.
So far, roughly 275 of the 500 boards that were created have been sold, she said. She said that while total costs for the new playground run about $400,000, she believes the board game sales could earn up to $20,000.
“It’s all familiar places, many of the places we already visit and utilize,” said Penny English, a Zelienople resident whose children have played the game.
“I just think this game is an idea that we brought to the table, and it’s come to fruition,” she said. “How cool is that? Like this is a keepsake our children are going to have forever.”
Budney contacted businesses in both Zelienople and Harmony to gather signatures for several of the properties the game features, signatures the game reproduced for its final version.
“This has been a passion project for me for sure,” she said. “We have a lot of the new businesses ... We reached out to them to ask if they wanted to be part of our board kind of forever.”
Harmony's Emergency Medical Services, the Lions Club, the Rotary Club of Zelienople and the Zelienople Historical Society all seized the chance to become part of the project. Other institutions, like Barber Dan of his namesake barbership and NexTier Bank, lent their names to the game’s play money.
Budney’s reimagined game is actually an update to a 1997 Zelie-opoly version. Much has changed since that time, including a different cast of businesses for the borough. But the powerful sense of belonging and unity that persevered throughout the pandemic’s roughest months drove Budney and the project’s many participants to make it happen.
Budney hopes the game will attract players from far beyond the borough’s borders.
“It’s great for members of our community who bought the game, right?” she said. “Or people who are just passing through who maybe come to vacation because they come to see family or they’ve heard about this really neat little town in Pennsylvania. And then they fall in love with one of our businesses or one of our restaurants. And then they get a copy of the game, and they take our little tiny town back, wherever they’re from, and share it with them.”
To buy a Zelie-opoly, contact the Zelienople Historical Society, Marshall Hair Salon, Little Green Bookstore, Eva Bryn Shoetique or Mathew Jewelers. Boards cost $40 apiece.
Players can order the game online through each of the businesses’ websites, and the game arrives for pickup at that location sometime within 48 hours.
