What do you remember downtown Pittston being like when you were young? When I grew up, the downtown was still vibrant. We still had Woolworth’s. We still had many restaurants. Sweetland. The American Theater. I saw many movies there with my friends. Coming from Pine Street we could walk downtown and there was a lot to do. When did you open an office in Pittston? I bought the old Valley Dress building at 139 South Main and renovated that. Vince Argenio, the chiropractor, is in it now. It’s called Main Street Commons now. We totally restored that building. It had 20 foot ceilings, and hardwood floors, brick walls. It’s really something to see. So anyway, I had a baby when I was 40 and I wanted to move into something smaller, so I bought into this property. Vince was in this space, so we traded spaces.
What is an example of an early success? I wanted to see a new sign ordinance and that came to fruition. Larry Newman wrote the ordinance. I reviewed it. We had input from the mayor, council. One of the signs that came out of that is the Palazzo sign. You’re going to see a number of signs that are going to go up with the old village, wooden engraved look. What does the ordinance do? It’s really to get a uniform look that’s pleasing to the eye. In the old ordinance if a business left town they were allowed to leave their sign up and all the hardware. So if a new business came into town they would just put new panels in them. The signs deteriorated. Now what we’re doing is when a business leaves we’re asking the property owners to take those down, so the new owners can go with the new sign under the ordinance. What else is the city doing to improve the look of the storefronts? We passed an ordinance to create a design and review commit-
What’s the key to revitalization? People. We have to get people living downtown. We have a number of projects, and I can’t say where they are, but they involve high end loft apartments in existing buildings on the Main Street. We want to attract young people and we want to provide housing that’s acceptable to them. Is that a nationwide trend, people coming back to small cities? Yes it is. People are sick of the big box shopping experience. Now is the time to strike. Can Palazzo’s be a role model to other businesses? Sure. When was the last time we saw 150 cars on Main Street on a weekend. He’s successful by anyone’s standards and he’s in Pittston. If people are coming down for Palazzo they may want to hear live music in a bar. The
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What’s the open space concept? It’s an opportunity where we can be versatile in renting a space out or in some cases giving it out in a building on Main Street, we’ll call the Open Space. For example there might be retailer that might want to come in on a weekend and do a special
sale. Or if someone wants to put on an art show or a concert fundraiser, or anything in the city we’ll have the space. We’re negotiating a few different options. We hope to have that open by the summer.
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When did you get involved working with the city? When Mike Lombardo ran for mayor. I was on his campaign committee and I was special solicitor for him. I was very involved in the city then. Then I had the baby and moved to Scranton. One of the reasons I stopped being involved with the Main Street was because council wasn’t willing to take that extra step and pass a Main Street ordinance to control the Main Street business district. Without that ordinance and without enforcement of it you get people who come in and do whatever they want. I already bought properties on Main Street and restored them. One of them was, before it was Palazzo, was a bar called Indigo, the old Rendezvous. I bought that with a couple of partners and restored it. It was going to be condemned. It has a glass block bar is amazing.
But eventually your faith was restored? For five of six years I was not involved in the city. When Mayor Klush came in he and Mike Lombardo, the councilman, invited me to be the downtown manager. I volunteered because there is nothing in the budget for that type of work. I love my job with the city and I try to devote as many hours as I can.
other businesses can play off of the people he’s attracting with his food. We have to provide something more, other than food, in the downtown.
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How is cheerleading good for girls? Well, it is a sport. It’s very athletic. There’s a lot of training and a lot of competition involved. It prepares them for life, because life is competitive. It gives them a good sense of themselves.
tee. Every time someone pulls a permit to do any façade work on Main Street or in the business district they have to submit an architectural rendering of what the front elevation of that building is going to look like and detail what type of finishes they are going to use. That has to be submitted to the committee and we are allowed, under the ordinance, to give input as to what we expect to see on the Main Street. We’re taking that a step further in the next couple months with another ordinance about what you can do to the façade on historical buildings. We want to restore, we don’t want to demolish. We have some historical building here that are beautiful and need restoration.
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After restoring a couple of buildings and not seeing any improvement in the surrounding areas, I sort of gave up.
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Rose