Business View Magazine | August 2019

322 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE AUGUST 2019 reuse.” In fact, all indicators, at the time, showed that reusing the sites for industrial purposes was neither feasible nor attractive to their owners. That set the stage for the borough’s efforts in trying to work in partnership with the property owners in developing plans to revitalize and redevelop the sites via the creation of walkable, mixed-use infill concepts, including residential, commercial, and possibly light industrial uses. “That all started in 2012,” Candland continues. “That master planning process took a couple of years to finish. By 2014, we had a plan, and there were three very cooperative property owners that wanted to work with us. The plan included demolition of buildings; it included some remediation of the properties; and it included infrastructure upgrades.” Fortuitously, Candland reports that implementation of the URP coincided with the Borough’s intent to repair, rehabilitate, and/or replace parts of its water and sewer system that were over a hundred years old. “Over the next 15 years, we’re looking at our water and sewer rehabilitation program as upwards of $75 million, maybe even more, depending on what we’ll actually find out in the field,” he notes. “So there were opportunities with these redevelopment sites to take care of a lot of the infrastructure - storm drains, water and sewer lines - while that development was going on. There were some cost savings by virtue of addressing that, so it was good timing that these things happened at the same time.” While the timing was fortunate, Candland gives the most credit for the URP’s progress to the high level of cooperation among its stakeholders: “One of the themes that runs throughout this project was the public/private partnerships, the cooperative relationships that we had, not only with the property owners, but also the other jurisdictions. For example, in order for us to implement Tax Increment Financing, we had to get the school board, which has taxing authority in Pennsylvania, and the county, onboard, and they were more than glad to do that. Also, the adjoining property owners were also very willing to work