2ND QUARTER DOWNTOWN RECOGNITION AWARD 
Patricia Majors and Virginia Korak  

(Renovated park area at pump house)

DOWNTOWN MONACA CALENDAR OF EVENTS    

Roxy's Ice Cream and Italian Ice, located at 911 Pennsylvania Avenue, is now open for the season.  Be sure to stop by for all your summer favorites!

The Monaca Business District Authority (MBA)
Monaca Volunteer Community Outreach (MVCO)

Presents:
A Volunteer Community Revitalization

Featuring:
· New park construction in the 9th Street business district
· Highly visible decorative crosswalks for enhanced public safety
· New decorative street poles and signs
· Walkway powerwash cleaning
· Planters-Trash Containers-Pet Clean up stations
· Landscape beautification at all Monaca gateways

Please make your tax deductible donation today!
Please make checks payable to: MVCO

Mail to:
Patricia L. Majors, Revitalization Project Coordinator
1223 Atlantic Avenue, Monaca, PA 15061 

Thanks to the Downtown First business directory, it has never been easier or faster to find what you are looking for in your downtown. Downtown First provides a free and easy-to-use online AND printable business directory for your downtown as well as approximately 20 other business districts in the region.

You can search for businesses by:

· Downtown: including your downtown and many nearby communities!

· Business Type: such as antiques or restaurants and cafes

· Keywords: such as the business name or a specific services you are looking for

Downtown First is leading the movement to support local businesses by making it possible for you to narrow your search to include only local, independent businesses....and making it easier for you to support them!

Remember to "put your money where your house is" by supporting your downtown businesses...first!

Help to market the vacant and/or available properties in your downtown with TCA's FREE DowntownProperties.net poster!

Placing the colorful DowntownProperties.net poster in your window will let everyone passing by know that it is available, whether your property is vacant or still being occupied.  

Most importantly, the poster can direct those interested in your property to DowntownProperties.net, where they can access important information about the property, such as contact information, address square footage, a photograph, community demographics, and more!    

If you are interested in a free poster for your property, please contact Town Center Associates at 724-728-9400 or tca@towncenter.info.

With the Assistance of
Carnegie Mellon University Masters Students

Through a partnership between Sustainable Pittsburgh and Town Center Associates (TCA), local communities have benefitted from the insight and expertise of Carnegie Mellon University students who were taking the "Sustainable Community" course, taught by professor, Dr. Matthew Mehalik (also of Sustainable Pittsburgh).

Participating communities selected a key project in their business district for which they were seeking fresh perspective and ideas. The students worked over the course of the semester in Aliquippa, Monaca, and New Brighton, visiting the communities, interviewing community members and conducting hours of research and analysis on the important business district projects.

The students presented their findings at a final symposium held at Carnegie Mellon University, and their final reports will soon be available on Sustainable Pittsburgh's website. The findings may be relevant to many of the issues your downtown may be facing, or projects you may want to pursue in the future. Topics in the reports include:

· Creating a Sustainable Downtown Park

·  Improving the Access Route from the Business District to an Important Community Park

· Developing Business District Wayfinding Systems

· Enhancing a Downtown Theater/Anchor Business

· And much more!

Town Center is grateful for the opportunity to work with the CMU students and Sustainable Pittsburgh, and we look forward to incorporating their suggestions into helping your community build a more sustainable business district. 

There is a fantastic new resource from the Housing Alliance of Pennsylvania that provides expertise and guidance in handling a host of issues related to downtown vacant property/land and blight issues.

This "NEW TOOLS QUICK GUIDE" provides a compilation and brief description of state laws recently enacted for Pennsylvania's communities to address the problem of vacant, abandoned and blighted private property.  

Check out the " New Tools Quick Guide".  

You are reading the Monaca FOCUS: your quarterly downtown e-newsletter. By using e-newsletters instead of print newsletters, we can send the information about our downtown revitalization efforts to a greater number of people and save paper--a win for the community and the environment!     

To receive your copy of the e-newsletter via email, simply send an email to tca@towncenter.info and indicate your email address, as well as the name of the town or towns for which you'd like to receive the e-newsletters. You can also call Town Center Associates to sign up at 724-728-9400.      

Please also take a moment to forward this email along to your friends, colleagues, family and neighbors, and encourage them to sign up today! This will help to inform (and involve) more citizens about the revitalization efforts taking place in our downtown.