Table of Contents

Page Number

Project History and Introduction 1

Part 1 – The Current State of the Business District 1

Market Area Demographics 1

Population Change 2

Key Facts 3

Demographics and Regional Retail Performance 3

Key Facts 5

Regional Retail Economics 5

Key Facts 8

Other Socio-Economics Issues 8

Previous and Related Planning Initiatives 8

Downtown Development Priorities from the County Economic Roadmap 11

Public Input – Surveys of the Community 11

Surveys 11

Merchant Survey 12

High Priority Merchant Suggestions 12

Moderate Priority Merchant Suggestions 12

Low Priority Merchant Suggestions 13

Shopper Survey 13

Key Facts 15

Physical Development Issues: Land Use, Zoning Streets and Building Utilization 16

Physical Development Issues 16

Land Use and Zoning 16

Streets and Landscape 19

Building Utilization/Building Façade/Commercial Features 19

Part 2 – Meadville Business District Strategy and Recommendations 24

Overall Goals 24

Urban Design Action Plan 25

Gateways 26

Public Space 28

Mill Run 30

Retail Core 30

Streetscapes 31

Parking 33

Key Initial Urban Design Actions 33

Business and Market Development Action Plan 34

Demographics 34

Zoning and Land Regulations 35

Main Street Program 36

Elm Street Program 37

Five-Year Business District Action Plan Summary 37

Year One 37

Year Two 38

Year Three 38

Year Four 39

Year Five 39

Tables

Population of Vernon Township, Crawford County, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania 2

Age Groups, 1990 3

Comparative MHI: Selected Communities 4

Detailed Household Income: City of Meadville 1989 and 1999 4

1999 Household Income by Percentage: Central Crawford Region 5

Retail Sales in Crawford County 1997-2002 6

Retail Sales by Type: City of Meadville 1997-2002 7

Prepared Food and Beverage Sales, Crawford County 1997-2002 8

1993 Comprehensive Plan Recommendations – 2006 Status and Results 9

1997 BDAP Goals – 2006 Results/Status 10

1997 Buildings/Projects – 2006 Status/Results 10

Merchants Survey Response to Public Services in Downtown Meadville 12

Actions Business Owners Would Support 13

Shoppers’ Survey Responses 14

Typical Developer’s RFP Incentives and Requirements 30

Maps

City of Meadville Business District Action Plan Project Area Follows Page 9

City of Meadville Business District Action Plan Project Area Land Use Follows Page1 6

City of Meadville Historic District Follows Page 30
City of Meadville Business District Action Plan Gateway, Streetscape and Public

Space Priorities – Downtown Priorities Follows Page 26

City of Meadville Business Action Plan Priority Blocks for New Development Follows Page 29
City of Meadville Business District Action Plan Potential Main Street and Elm Street Areas Follows Page 32

Glossary of Terms

BID – Business Improvement District: A special sub-municipal taxing district where additional property taxes are only spent within the district.

BDAP: Common acronym for Business District Action Plan.

CONTEXT SENSITIVE DESIGN: A movement by traffic engineers to make street systems fit better into their surroundings.

CORE COMMUNITY: A planning term for older cities and boroughs that traditionally served as business and government centers.

ELM STREET PROGRAM: A Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development Program to revitalize residential areas adjacent to downtowns in core communities.

HOMETOWN STREETS: A Pennsylvania grant program that uses federal transportation funds to improve sidewalks, streetlights, street furniture public spaces, and pedestrian safety in Pennsylvania’s older downtown areas.

MAIN STREET PROGRAM: A Pennsylvania Department of Community Development initiative to revitalize downtown areas. Main Street provides planning, management, marketing, and design assistance.

LERTA: Acronym for Local Economic Revitalization Tax Assistance, a Pennsylvania state act that allows municipalities to abate all or part of the real estate tax on new improvements to property for a period of up to ten years.

RFP: A Request for Proposals; in the BDAP, this means a request from developers to offer a package to purchase and develop public property, or private property in partnership with the city and present owner.

TIF: Acronym for Tax Incremental Financing, which allows a municipality to finance future improvements based upon a capture area of development that benefits from new infrastructure. Businesses within a TIF district know that a portion of their real estate taxes directly benefit them.

TND: Traditional Neighborhood Development, both a movement to build better neighborhoods based upon historic examples, and a legal form of unified development allowed by the Pennsylvania Municipalities Planning Code.

TRID: An acronym for the Transit Revitalization Investment District; a state act that allows transit facilities to be a partner in a TIF District.

Meadville Business District Action Plan Update

Project History and Introduction: This document represents an update to the City of Meadville Business District Action Plan (BDAP). The purpose of the BDAP is to serve as a relatively brief, action-oriented planning document.

As the title indicates, this is actually an update of an existing Business District Action Plan. That plan was prepared and adopted in 1997. This Plan attempts to build upon that foundation, rather than repeating that effort. The main difference in approach was a greater emphasis on urban design issues.

The decision to update the Business District Action Plan coincided with a multi-municipal comprehensive plan update that involved the City of Meadville, Vernon Township, Sadsbury Township, and Conneaut Lake Borough. This multi-municipal planning effort created the possibility for the City to play an active role in decisions about future growth and development in the greater region. Early in the process, local government officials from all four municipalities expressed a desire that Meadville remain a strong, vibrant core community. It is hoped that by integrating actions and policies from this document into the overall regional plan, it will be easier to pool resources and successfully implement this Plan.

The first part of the BDAP update looks at four issues:

· Market Area Demographics

· Regional Retail Economics

· Other Socio-Economic Issues

· Physical Development Issues

This section comprises a snapshot of existing conditions at the time of this update. The data collected was used to develop the actual Action Plan recommendations, which comprises Part 2 of this document. The Action Plan contains lists of possible activities, and an explanation of the specific public policies and actions for continuing the revitalization of the heart of Meadville.

Part 1 -- The Current State of the Business District

Market Area Demographics

The most basic measurement of retail capacity is the population of the Study Area. The number of people who comprise the market are important in calculating possible retail market size, and whether the market is growing or declining. Much of the following data was collected for the multi-municipal comprehensive plan background report.

Population Change: For the study communities of Conneaut Lake Borough, Meadville City, and Sadsbury and Vernon Townships, the population has been in a state of flux ever since 1960. In that year, Meadville was the major population center of the Central Crawford County Region, with 16,671 residents. It represented over 70 percent of the Study Area’s total population of 23,561. Roughly, one in three Crawford County residents lived in these four municipalities.

Twenty years later, the booming manufacturing economy of northwestern Pennsylvania had swelled the regional population to 25,361, an increase of 1,800 persons, or 7.7 percent; nearly twice the statewide population increase. Meadville lost population to 15,544 persons, or 6.8 percent; but the other three municipalities all saw sizable increases in residents. This includes a nearly 40 percent increase in Vernon Township’s population from 1960 to 1980.

However, the seeds of the Region’s decline were already planted by 1980. The beginning of the national recession of the early 1980s could be seen in western Pennsylvania in the mid-1970s, the most severe economic downturn nationally since the Great Depression. This recession was the catalyst for a large rust belt out-migration. Crawford County and the Study Area were not immune to this trend. The population of the four communities tumbled to 22,833 persons in 2000, a decline of 2,528 residents, or 10.0 percent. Meadville had the most significant decline over these twenty years in absolute terms, of 1,859 persons. Surprisingly, in percentage terms, Vernon Township’s decline of 13.4 percent was a bit larger than the 12.9 percent decline of the City. Sadsbury Township was the big winner over the last twenty years of the century, with an overall population increase of 239 persons, or 8.8 percent.

Population of Crawford Central Region, Crawford County, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
	1960	1970	Percent Change	1980	Percent Change	1990	Percent Change	2000	Percent Change
Conneaut Lake Borough	700	745	6.0	767	3.0	699	8.9	708	1.3
Meadville City	16,671	16,573	-0.6	15,544	-6.2	14,318	-7.9	13,685	-4.4
Sadsbury Township	1,601	2,221	38.7	2,702	21.7	2,575	-4.7	2,941	12.4
Vernon Township	4,589	5,264	14.7	6,348	20.6	5,605	-11.7	5,499	-1.9
Regional Totals	23,561	24,803	5.3	25,361	2.2	23,197	-8.5	22,833	-1.6
Crawford County	77,956	81,342	4.3	88,869	9.25	86,169	-3.0