FAQ's / Info

Foundation Information
Grant Information
Main Street Project Information
Economic Impact of Valley Vision 2015 and the Foundation

Foundation Information

Who is the Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce Foundation?
The mission of the Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce Foundation (The Foundation), the 501(C)(3) charitable arm of the Chamber, is to create a vibrant downtown community by serving as a valley-wide Main Street advocate and partner for business development and success in our downtowns. As such, it will secure and distribute the resources necessary to support downtown initiatives that create economic vitality, encourage recruitment or retainment of downtown businesses, strengthen regional cooperation of all Main Street programs, and enhance the quality of life in urban cores throughout the Lehigh Valley.

What is the Foundation's Goal?
The Foundation's goal is to raise, invest, and distribute funds for specific Main Street projects and business purposes in the Lehigh Valley. These funds are intended to support and leverage existing public sector resources, and will be used to ensure business growth and success, and to encourage the reinvestment in and redevelopment of our downtowns and urban cores throughout the Lehigh Valley.

How will the Foundation do it?
Through the work of the Campaign General Chairs: Lee Butz; Andy Daub; and Kim Snyder, the Foundation is embarking on an aggressive and bold new five-year action plan, to raise financial resources for the Lehigh Valley with the focus on distributing these funds in downtown and surrounding traditional neighborhoods of Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton, while strengthening the surrounding Main Streets in the 19 boroughs in the Lehigh Valley. The campaign plan is entitled Valley Vision 2015. By combining resources, exchanging best-practice information and creating a formalized, collaborative approach to grant making, the Foundation intends to strengthen the positive work that is already taking place in the Lehigh Valley.

Grant Information

The following are eligible for grants:
1. Local government; including, but not limited to, counties, cities, boroughs, townships, and home rule municipalities.
2. Municipal and redevelopment authorities and agencies.
3. Industrial development authorities and agencies.
4. Non-profit organizations incorporated under the laws of the Commonwealth.
5. Community organizations engaged in activities consistent with program guidelines, as determined by the Foundation.

Main Street Project Information

Eligible projects in Main Street areas must meet one or more of the following criteria:
1. Improve the stability of the community.
2. Promote economic and/or community development.
3. Improve existing and/or develop new civic, cultural, recreational, industrial and other facilities or activities.
4. Assist in business retention, expansion, creation or attraction.
5. Promote the creation of jobs and employment opportunities.
6. Enhance the health, welfare and quality of life of citizens of the Lehigh Valley.

Why do we do it?
Before World War II, Main Street was the community's primary commercial hub. Downtown buildings usually had several tenants - typically a ground-floor retailer and, frequently, several upper-floor offices or apartments; together these tenants provided enough rent for property owners to keep their buildings in good condition. The presence of the post office, library, banks, and local government offices added to the steady flow of people downtown. Not only was Main Street the center of the community's commercial life, it was also an important part of civic life; people filled the streets on Saturday nights to meet friends, see a movie, and window-shop.

In the past 40 years, America's downtowns have changed drastically. The creation of the interstate highway system and subsequent growth of suburban communities transformed the ways in which Americans live, work, and spend leisure time. With improved transportation routes, people found it easier to travel longer distances to work or shop. Roads that once connected neighborhoods to downtown now carried residents to outlying shopping strips and regional malls. Throughout the nation, in town after town, the story repeated itself. Downtown businesses closed or moved to the mall, shoppers dwindled, and property values and sales tax revenues dropped. Some downtowns sank under the weight of their own apathy. Neglected buildings, boarded-up storefronts, and empty, trash-strewn streets gradually reinforced the public's perception that nothing was happening downtown, that nothing was worth saving there. People forgot how important their downtown and its historic commercial buildings are in reflecting their community's unique heritage.

In many communities, downtown merchants and property owners tried to halt this spiral of decline by imitating their competition - the shopping mall. Their attempts to modernize downtown took the forms of pedestrian malls; covering traditional building fronts with aluminum slipcovers; and attaching huge, oversized signs on their buildings to attract attention. These well-meaning, but usually ineffective, methods did not stabilize downtown's decline, mostly because they did not address the fundamental problem - that businesses had not evolved with the market and that people no longer saw the downtown as a shopping destination. The economic boom of the 1980s brought increased development beyond traditional areas that led to problems associated with sprawl - uncontrolled growth and cookie-cutter architecture, which reflected neither a sense of place nor a sense of pride.

Facing these issues, more than 1,700 communities have adopted the Main Street approach in the past 25 years to look again at Main Street, the heart of their community, to save its historic buildings, to revive its commercial core, to strengthen business, to control community-eroding sprawl, and to protect the sense of place and community life in America.

Top Challenges?
Main Streets, of course, faced many challenges. Here are the top four challenges mentioned in the Trends survey:

• Almost 40 percent of all Main Street districts mentioned the challenge of making the transition from start-up to long-term funding.
• Second on the list was managing a commercial district during lengthy public improvements construction, particularly Many Main Street communities reported success in rehabbing and reusing their historic theaters, when sidewalk and street improvements, make it difficult for customers to physically get inside businesses.
• The third major challenge was finding new businesses to fill vacant storefronts - particularly independent businesses.
• Fourth of the top mentioned challenges was the problem of big box discount stores leapfrogging into larger spaces, abandoning their smaller - but still giant - stores to deteriorate as they sit vacant. Wal-Mart alone now has more than 430 vacant stores in the United States, but still plans to build at least 300 new stores. Wal-Mart, it seems, is becoming both smaller and larger at the same time. It has now built approximately 65 "Neighborhood Markets" - 45,000 square-feet in urban areas, where the company has not yet had much of a presence. At the same time, Wal-Mart is building superstores in the 220,000-square-foot range.
• Some retailers are now treating storefront locations as a form of advertising. Apple Computer has opened many 50-foot-wide storefronts, primarily in new town centers in areas with the demographics they're seeking. Apple doesn't expect to sell a dime in the store itself, but it has figured out that a store that costs $1 million annually to operate is less expensive than a 30-second prime-time television spot which people fast-forward through on TiVo® now anyway. It's better for the company to have storefronts in carefully selected markets where customers can try out the computers, then buy them online later. If Apple actually sells things in the store itself, so much the better - but it's not the company's expectation.

Is there hope for Main Street?
Yes! While many of these changes have contributed to economic decline, there are also trends and assets that support rejuvenation of our traditional commercial districts - what we call Main Street. For instance:

• Many consumers are tired of the homogeneity and impersonality of shopping malls, big-box businesses, and chain stores. People value personal attention, name recognition, quality merchandise, and exemplary service - all potential features of traditional commercial districts.
• A community's business district represents a substantial share of its economy: its jobs, tax base, municipal investment, and businesses.
• Because consumers are more mobile today than several decades ago, the market area that a downtown or neighborhood commercial district can potentially serve is much greater than it used to be.
• More and more Americans enjoy visiting historic places, not just for vacation, but also for everyday business and leisure activities. Traditional community centers offer unique shopping in historic environments.

Seven Keys to Success
I think there are seven keys to guiding our districts through the next decade:

First, we need to strengthen our planning and land-use laws so that "rural" is really rural, and "urban" is really urban, and the sprawl between the two of them is controlled better or, better yet, is never built. A retail size cap ordinance; A Main Street-friendly comprehensive plan; and Financial incentives for Main Street investment are all best practices.

One of the best local policies I've heard of comes from Buckingham, Pennsylvania, which passed a 1991 zoning ordinance that limits stores to 35,000 square feet and requires the developer to submit a market analysis proving that there is market demand for the facility. Entities that own buildings that are larger than 10,000 square feet and vacant for more than 12 months have to demolish or adaptively reuse the building.

Second, we need to create an environment that cultivates and supports innovative new businesses. We need to offer training, peer-to-peer mentoring, seed capital, financing, and the market research needed to help independent businesses get established and grow on Main Street.

Third, we need 24/7 districts - and that means we need housing. We need eyes on the street. People keeping an eye and ear on what's happening 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and we need neighborhood-serving retail businesses to meet their basic consumer needs. Fortunately, the federal Main Street/HOPE VI program will make gap funds available in communities under 50,000 so that they can create affordable housing in existing buildings - like upper floor spaces above storefronts.

Fourth, we need to think beyond retail. Unlike a shopping mall, where 100 percent of the space is devoted to retail, less than 20 percent of the space in a fully occupied Main Street district is actually used for retail businesses - and that's good. The rest of the space is employed for housing, offices, government functions, entertainment, religion, and, increasingly, small-scale industries. These activities give Main Street districts economic buoyancy and market diversity - and their employees become customers of community - serving retail businesses on the ground floor. Whether it's an otherwise traditional retailer who finds a niche market online and becomes, in essence, a wholesaler, or a manufacturer whose customers are almost exclusively non-local, the small manufacturers locating in Main Street districts have been an important part of their economic rebound over the past five or six years and will become increasingly important in the years ahead.

Fifth, entertainment needs to be a stronger component of Main Streets - whether it's a theater, a spontaneous street performance, or a farmers market. People are starved for things to do besides watching television and going shopping. We need to give them a comfortable place to go and read, browse, see a show, take part in a festival, or visit with friends in a coffeehouse.

Sixth, we need to place greater emphasis on the environment. Our national habit of building new commercial buildings and tearing down older ones is wreaking havoc not only on Main Street's economy, but also on the environment. Each year, for example, the U.S. buries about 33 million tons of wood-related construction and demolition debris in landfills. This makes up almost half of all the material in solid-waste landfills in this country. As micro-organisms decompose this wood, it releases 5 million tons of carbon in the form of methane gas. This is equivalent to the yearly emissions of 3,736,000 passenger cars. We've learned to recycle newspaper, glass, and aluminum cans - so, why don't we make it our highest priority to reuse historic buildings? Maybe we can persuade people who don't care much about a district's history, or about the higher economic value of locally owned businesses that it makes good environmental sense to reuse existing buildings before building new ones.

Seventh and last, we need to place greater emphasis on history. America's history was made on its Main Streets - celebrations, protests, and festivals. Our Main Streets are the place where our civil rights remain intact - not at shopping malls, where decades of case law have concluded that malls are private enterprises and that free speech could be a risk to the success of those private enterprises, thereby dissuading customers from shopping there. So the malls give us sanitized environments - and Main Streets give us real places and real experiences.

As threatening to Main Streets as discount superstores might be, the biggest threat yet might come from new town centers, which look a bit like older, historic town centers but have worked out all the kinks, like providing free parking, and building mandatory store hours into the leases. These sanitized centers are becoming enormously popular. Time will tell how people will interpret the value of these new town centers, managed like shopping malls but looking like Main Streets, and if they'll measure up to the real thing.

Who benefits from a revitalized Main Street & Commercial District?

• 1,087 jobs
• $55 million in earnings/payroll
• $126.3 million in output/business activity

Job Creation - The new businesses are estimated to create 600 new direct jobs that are expected to generate the following economic impact:

• 873 total jobs (direct, indirect and induced)
• $30.7 million of earnings/payroll
• $4.1 million of output
• $22.2 million of consumer expenditures
• $10.4 million flowing through local financial institutions

Sales tax revenue is estimated to total approximately:

• $1.44 million by program's completion

The full impact of the Valley Vision 2015 initiative reaches well beyond these findings. The downtown revitalization initiative will create jobs, grow existing businesses, attract new businesses, increase the tax base by developing vacant and underutilized buildings to better uses, bolster property values throughout the community, and increase collaboration between public and private sectors in order to attain common goals. Enhancing the community's pride and quality of life is the most important impact that validates the ongoing support of this project.