READING MAIN STREET PROGRAM ////
The
Other Side of the Bridge
... The Reading Main Street Program
By Carl Brown Jr., Special Projects Coordinator Reading Downtown Improvement District
A strong commitment to community revitalization and historic preservation has earned the Reading Downtown Improvement District (DID) designation as an accredited National Main Street Program. Achieving this designation calls for adhering to commercial district revitalization performance standards set by the National Main Street Center®, a subsidiary of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The standards are tough to attain, noted Charles R. Broad, DID’s Executive Director and also the Reading Main Street Manager. “We worked hard to receive this designation,” Broad said. “It shows that we’re very focused on our mission of creating a vital, productive and commercially active environment in downtown Reading.” The Reading Main Street Program has a board of directors that meets regularly to ensure the program is staying on course. The board is chaired by Jack Gulati, a local entrepreneur who has operated a variety of businesses and who currently owns the Reading Royals hockey team.
The Reading Downtown Improvement District provides cleaning, security and marketing services for a specially designated commercial district in the city, and also sponsors several events and activities throughout the year, including MidDay Cafes and the Reading Holiday Parade.
Other board members are Ellen Horan, President and CEO of the Greater Reading Chamber of Commerce & Industry; Sean Moretti, who owns Destination Realty, LLC in Reading and is also a real estate broker; Brian Fichthorn, who is a financial project manager with Brentwood Industries and board president of Genesius Theatre; and John Kramer, Director Emeritus of the Center for Community Leadership at Albright College. In addition, there are five committees under the Main Street Program that focus on various aspects of downtown revitalization. They are: Promotion; Design; Organization; Economic Restructuring; and Safe, Clean and Green. The Reading Main Street Program’s performance is annually evaluated by the Pennsylvania Downtown Center, which works in partnership with the National Main Street Center to identify local programs that meet 10 performance standards. These standards set the benchmarks for measuring an individual Main Street program’s application of the Main Street Four Point Approach® to commercial district revitalization.
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Avenues Spring 2015