The Big K Morning Show
Main Street Matters
man as well. I hear the boss. Man, he was back in town after eight years for two shows wrapped around Labor Day. Got the 10 one of them. The boss still got it. I mean, the boss on the stage. Of course, our boss, Aaron still has it, right? Just say yes. Yes. Good answer. We welcome Rick Sager, who is with the he's the Secretary of Community Matters and Economic Development of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Main Street Matters. Rick, welcome to KDKA. Great to be here on my hometown radio station, Larry. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Where'd you grow up, Rick? I grew up in O'Hara Township in Fox chopper area and live in shade. Yeah. Well, there you go. I appreciate your time. This is exciting for me because we've spent so much time and with my radio partner and our midday host, Marty Griffin, talking about how to reimagine downtown. I would think there's some good news in the sense that a couple of factors. One is we heard Amazon this week say that they're going to have their employees come back to the office by the first of the year. I would imagine that sets the bar to reinvigorate some downtown areas. But right now, the focus is on trying to reimagine our cities and keep them viable. So tell us a little bit about Main Street Matters and the mission. Yeah. Thanks again for having me on. Look on September 3rd. So just a couple of weeks ago, we opened a brand new program called Main Street Matters. That's part of Governor Shapiro's budget for this year. And it's really about supporting Main Streets. It's about downtown business districts. It's about small businesses and communities all across Pennsylvania. And I want to emphasize this is a program that's important in rural areas, but also suburban and urban areas. So as I've traveled Pennsylvania, I've been in Honesdale in the Northeast. I've been in Fishtown, a neighborhood of Philadelphia. I've been in Ambridge just a couple of weeks ago with Lieutenant Governor Davis. We think that the importance of these cores of our communities, downtowns and Main Streets, wherever they are, are critical to the future of Pennsylvania. And we want to invest there. And I think I personally think that's a tremendous idea because so many of our smaller communities just need a little lift. And it does a body good, I think, when you see the Main Street in your town, making some progress and, you know, aesthetically looking good too, right? That's right. And that's why we've designed this program at scale. So it's a $20 million per year program statewide, but also with flexibility to kind of meet communities where they are. We want to be able to fund microgrants for small businesses, but also to your point, grants that can beautify communities, things like facade grants, things like stormwater management and sort of streetscape improvements that make downtowns sort of sing in a way that I think we all know. This is not just important though to sort of make things look good. There's a real economic imperative here, right? Downtowns are economic hubs. There were businesses want to be there where people want to live, tourists want to visit, folks innovate. And we think that's really part of our overall economic plan for the state. So how do these small towns and bigger towns too, how do they tap into this resource? Yeah. Well, look, we opened early September. You can go to our website right now dced.pa.gov and get an application going. Only certain organizations are eligible, like individuals can apply, but any local government can apply, like a city or a town or a borough. Redevelopment authorities can apply, nonprofits can apply, community development groups can apply. Folks whose mission is really focused on making downtowns or neighborhoods great. And there are lengthy and detailed guidelines on our website, but I'd also encourage folks to reach out to our team. We've seen huge interest from folks all across Pennsylvania in this program, no surprise. And we're ready to have conversations with people about trying to structure the best application possible to serve the goals of the local community. And let me just focus on that for one second. This is not about the state telling Ambridge or downtown Pittsburgh or Brookline what to do. This is about us empowering local leadership to sort of realize their vision for a great downtown or main street. And we'll start seeing this when when will the actual monies when will some of these things start to be visual? Sure. Well, November 15th, the application period closes. So we want to give folks a lot of time to sort of do the hard work to put together a plan to apply for the dollars. Once that closes, we'll move really quickly to evaluate those applications and we should award sometime early in the new year. All right, Rick. Appreciate the update. Thank you. Thank you for having me, sir. We've got Rick Sager, who is the secretary of community and economic development commonwealth of Pennsylvania Main Street matters, especially yours.