By CHIP MINEMYER
The Tribune-Democrat
June 21, 2009 12:11 am
—
Do seemingly distant communities such as Windber and Waynesburg share common challenges?
Could ideas developed in Somerset also be useful in Steubenville, Ohio?
Would planning for growth in Johnstown or Jerome be meaningful in Mercer or Monessen?
For Allen Kukovich and others involved with the Regional Visioning Project, the answer to all of those questions is: Yes.
The Regional Visioning Project is a new planning effort aimed at defining the common themes in a 30-county area surrounding Pittsburgh.
The project’s geographic region encompasses more than 16,000 square miles in four states – Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio and West Virginia.
The expansive area includes Cambria, Somerset and Bedford counties, and could soon include Blair County as well.
Kukovich, the project’s executive director, has been meeting with community leaders and laying the groundwork for economic-impact efforts across an area 10 times the size of Rhode Island.
“We’ve looked at a number of other regional planning efforts, some of which didn’t work,” Kukovich said when visiting The Tribune-Democrat last week. “Those that do work have good regional participation.
“This isn’t about competition. That’s the whole problem,” he said. “Our competition is Charlotte, N.C., and places like that. We really need to stop thinking so parochially and realize what assets we have and build upon them.”
‘Beyond our own boundaries’
One asset that moves across the study region is the Great Allegheny Passage. The 150-mile trail system connects Pittsburgh with Cumberland, Md., and cuts through the heart of Somerset County.
Pamela Tokar-Ickes, chairwoman of the Somerset County commissioners, believes her county’s affiliations with the Southern Alleghenies Planning and Development Commission – a six-county program – means Somerset is already in tune with the concept of regional cooperation.
“Being involved at the county level, I recognize that we are working in a time for government when we have to look beyond our own boundaries,” said Tokar-Ickes, who represents Somerset County on the Regional Visioning Project steering committee. “We have to find ways to maximize the resources available to us.”
She believes the project should do as much to send visitors to places such as Seven Springs Mountain Resort and the Flight 93 memorial as to Pittsburgh Pirates games and the Carnegie Science Center, and to guide businesses in her county as much as those in Allegheny County and elsewhere.
“I am very happy, because for the first time, Somerset County is being recognized as part of western Pennsylvania,” she said. “We all do face a lot of the same economic challenges.
“Those of us who have been out here on the frontier are very hopeful that the arrow will point back this way,” Tokar-Ickes added. “Certainly, we don’t want to simply be absorbed into Pittsburgh. The counties out here should be active participants in the process.”
‘Structure for real conversation’
Michael Kane of Johnstown agreed. Kane, executive director of the Community Foundation for the Alleghenies, represents Cambria County on the steering committee.
He said the regional planning approach will be worthwhile if local programs can be linked to the larger effort. He cited the City of Johnstown’s new Master Plan and the 20/20 Regional Vision Project as local initiatives that could make the broader effort useful for this area, and also allow Johnstown to be a contributor to the four-state planning initiative.
“From a local standpoint, I can see this working two ways,” Kane said. “First, as our local visioning is happening, we become engaged with a larger effort, which gets us connected with a larger region. Second, coming out of that there’s going to be action.
“We’re moving forward on specific ideas here, and a real key will be connecting those local efforts to what’s happening in the larger region. Now there’s a structure for real conversation to happen.”
The project was launched with financial support from the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation of Allegheny County. Other contributors – to an anticipated budget of $1.5 million to $2 million – include the Grable Foundation, the Heinz Endowments, the Richard K. Mellon Foundation and the Pittsburgh Foundation.
The project will be a two-year effort and, Kukovich said, leaders in the Pittsburgh area are committed to reaching out to the surrounding communities to find common opportunities.
“If I have a predetermined agenda, it would be to preclude local people from feeling as if they don’t really have a stake in this thing,” Kukovich said. “That’s the key. We must have that support, that engagement, for anything like this to happen.”
“These foundations really are taking a look at this region, as a region,” Kane said. “They’re looking beyond Pittsburgh and Allegheny County in a meaningful way.”
Melding ‘diverse interests’
The project’s geography includes:
n Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Bedford, Butler, Cambria, Fayette, Greene, Indiana, Lawrence, Mercer, Somerset, Washington and Westmoreland counties in southwestern Pennsylvania.
n Brooke, Hancock, Harrison, Marion, Marshall, Monongalia, Ohio, Preston, Tyler and Wetzel counties in northern West Virginia.
n Belmont, Columbiana, Jefferson, Mahoning and Monroe counties in eastern Ohio.
n Garrett County in northern Maryland.
Kukovich said he would like to see Blair County added, along with Allegany County, Md.
He said the project is patterned after efforts in places such as Orlando, Fla, and Charlotte. The only bigger regional visioning effort in the country, Kukovich said, is in Chicago and that city’s suburbs.
“We need to ask questions such as, ‘What do you want your community to look like 10 years from now?’ ” he said. “This is a beautiful place. If regional visioning works, we’ve got a shot to generate some optimism.”
“The (project) area is so large that the challenge will be to meld all of those diverse interests together and find common projects that we can move forward with,” Tokar-Ickes said.
“It will be a positive thing if we can come out of this with some concrete ideas that we can work on together.”
‘Something to bring to the table’
The project will be rolled out in three phases, Kukovich said.
Currently, he and others on the steering committee are seeking public feedback and attracting participants from across the project’s 30 counties. The next phase will be to chart regional challenges and opportunities. Finally, the project will be developing a “to-do” list of initiatives that could meet those challenges and opportunities.
“There’s a grass-roots-up element to this as well as a leadership-down element,” Kane said.
Currently, the project lacks a permanent name. Kukovich said organizers realize they must come up with something more specific than Regional Visioning Project, and a contest is being held through the end of June to name the program. To suggest a name, send an e-mail to: entercontest@regionalvision.org.
The program is being run out of an office at the University of Pittsburgh.
Kane said Cambria County’s best chance for being a player in the regional planning will be continuing to develop its own local planning projects.
“The fact that what we’re doing can help inform a larger effort, and also allow us to learn from it, that’s exciting,” Kane said. “Because of what we’re doing here, we have something to bring to the table.”
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