This past week, from October 3rd to the 5th, members of the University of Pittsburgh’s Appalachian Collegiate Research Initiative (ACRI) visited Fayette County. During this trip, we met with community members and spend time in three towns within the county: Connellsville, Uniontown, and Brownsville. I am a member of the business cohort of this project, and there are students from other areas such as the sustainability capstone, urban studies, and political science. Our focus in this project is to aid in creating sustainable economic development in the area through a 10-year commitment between the University of Pittsburgh and the Fayette County Cultural Trust. This is the fourth year in this commitment, and we are building upon the work of the students before us through a log of research kept by students that precede us in this project.
Throughout our trip, we stayed at Touchstone, Center for Crafts, in Farmington, PA. It is a business that provides workshops, exhibitions, and events for artists to learn and share their art and has on-campus housing for people to experience their educational opportunities. Each night, we convened as a group to discuss the things we learned through our conversations with community members and our goals and plans moving forward.
On Thursday, the beginning of our trip, we ate dinner and conversed on the plan of each group for the next day. Prior to our trip, each group reached out to members of the community to meet with as well as invite them to our lunch at the Connellsville Canteen to allow them to share their expertise and experiences with all members of the project. Among these community members were Daniel Cocks and J. Michael Edwards of the Fayette County Cultural Trust. We got to see their plans coming to action in the Fayette Entrepreneurship & Educational Center, such as the black box theater and art studio. Our main goal is to gain a stronger idea of the community and identify the areas community members would like us to focus our efforts.
A campfire and a night of rest later, it was Friday before I knew it. The day ahead consisted of visiting Connellsville to learn more about the connection between the area to the Great Allegheny Passage (GAP) and developments occurring such as the creation of a brewery in the area and an event center in construction right off the GAP trail. After that, we met with a pharmacist at a local pharmacy before heading to lunch with community members. We also visited Uniontown for dinner and spent time in the area.
The county has a lot of assets in terms of tourism. For example, in Connellsville, there are a lot of developments to appeal to bikers traveling through the Great Allegheny Passage such as the Comfort Inn hotel. Ohiopyle State Park and Falling Water by Frank Llyod Wright are also highly trafficked tourist spots in the area. There are a lot of budding businesses throughout the county; although, the struggle of housing continued to arise.
I was surprised to hear through conversations with the Commissioners that Fayette County has a very large population of people that commute into the county to work. Yet, the ever-evolving world of Airbnb is limiting the growing potential of the area. The housing problem is increasingly paralyzing to economic growth in the area as it limits the ability to maintain a workforce for budding industries in the area. I also found the groups plans moving forward to expand these industry opportunities to hit five main topics (agriculture, energy, manufacturing, healthcare, tourism) very interesting. They described taking a more active role to help find potential entrepreneurs in these areas that may know what they want but do not know how to get there. The community is achieving many of the goals they have set out for themselves. For instance, there are improvements to a housing project they have been working on to rebuild demolished homes into options for single families. Parallelly, we witness construction in action on one of the bridges, McCray-Robb Bridge on Crawford Avenue, in Connellsville that was in the plan for 14 years. The project will provide a more save passage for GAP bikers that has separation from car traffic.
Another asset of these communities is just that, the community aspect. To elaborate, when learning more about a local school, I can see the large amount of investment the community puts into providing students with hands on and interactive learning. In particular, the school has a good connection to a local bank to help provide a real-world learning model for students to study finance. Similarly, the high school provides a way to connect students to the older community members through a connection to elderly homes through a class program. Additionally, Salem University is an accessible option for people pursuing higher education to attend that is able to keep ties to community leaders to mold education in a more Fayette County focused way.
The county has a strong system in place for grant writing and good connections with great support to help them find success in raising funds for projects. The use of these funds also seems to be distributed to many local businesses through the community to help promote growth to many. The Commissioners describe a slight difficultly they faced with the representation of the area. They find that people do not truly understand the development they have until they visit the county themselves. They also describe having a record of success with use of funding to being very important in raising more. I think that this could be a beneficial area to expand their media representation. Seeing the community this past week, it is obvious to me the wonderful things going on throughout the community, but to others that may not have the time to travel to the county to get a first-hand experience before making decisions on whether or not to fund their projects, the online presence could play a large role. Hearing this, I remembered a previous initiative of the project, Celebrating Connellsville. I think the community engaging in more options like this on social media and having a strong and frequently updated website could be helpful in providing a more accurate representation of the county. Likewise, I think this is a great opportunity to provide young people a way to make a big impact in their community.
When meeting with a local pharmacist, we got the introduction to a common thread touched on by many community members. When walking down the street in Connellsville, almost every store front has a hiring sign. The community is having a difficult time finding people to work. Identifying this issue is pushing the business cohort to focus our efforts on career development topics. Our main focus is creating a program to present at the Fayette Entrepreneurship & Educational Center. This program could manifest in many different ways. Some of the things we are going to dive deeper into is resume building, creating a job fair, self-presentation, and networking. Along with that, sites that often help people from Pittsburgh or Philadelphia find jobs such as Indeed or Glassdoor are not as conducive for more rural environments. The idea of developing a potential job board for the county is particularly interesting and a topic I would like to investigate more. How do community members find their jobs and positions? How can business owners connect with potential employees and vice versa? Is there a way we can limit this barrier of communication these two groups are facing? These are all questions that we will be exploring and providing answers to in the next steps of our project. This includes a continual outreach to community members to ensure our efforts are serving the community in an appropriate way.
Despite the short amount of time in Fayette County before traveling back to the University of Pittsburgh, Saturday morning, the business cohort visited Brownsville after packing up the cars and checking out of Touchstone Center for Craft. In Brownsville, we got to see Nemacolin Castle in person which is a national landmark built in 1786 and see local businesses in the center of the town.
Reflecting on this past week, I am inspired by the heart and drive of community members throughout Fayette County and their continual effort to maintaining development to their area. Appalachia is a region with deep history and sense of community, and I am appreciative to have been able to learn and see these things as well as being welcomed by community members who offered their time to share it with us. It was additionally interesting meeting people who are not originally from the area but found themselves there permanently for varying reasons, and the sense of pride they feel for being members of the community as well. I think it gave me a little bit of insight to what the future for regions throughout Appalachia can be through the numerous opportunities the community has to bring.