CLEARFIELD – Think of Clearfield Borough. Now think of strengths, weaknesses and opportunities of and threats to the Clearfield Borough.
That was what was asked of guests of a Clearfield Revitalization Corporation meeting Wednesday.
The meeting was targeted towards the public, business owners and community leaders in the downtown area of Clearfield. It was the next step in the plan to unite Clearfield under a united front when asking the state for assistance.
To help with that, this meeting’s goals were to gather input from the community to get a better understanding what the community thought of its self.
Strengths given by the guests included the friendly citizens of the area, the affordability of the community, a county seat, tourism loci, new energy focus between the shale deposits and bio energies, cultural locations and the guaranteed non-flooding river running through it.
Weaknesses included attitude of the local populating in the terms of “why would anyone be interested in Clearfield?”, that the community is affordable, lack of decent paying jobs, a dwindling 25 to 40 population, parking, lack of kid friendly attractions and that the town becomes a near ghost town once five o’ clock hits.
The potential geothermal heating and bio ethanol were quick first additions to the opportunities for Clearfield. Being within four to five hours of nearly every major city on the east coast, possible use as a retirement community and a population of 15,000 should the borough and township merge.
A few of the listed threats to the community included the drug trafficking, a recent crime spree, lack of street lighting, Lawrence Township’s lower tax rate, the 18 percent of the borough that is tax-exempt, the why bother attitude and non-unified planning.
There were a few themes that transcended these categories. Making use of the second floors of many of the downtown buildings came up several times. Some proposed as apartments, others offices and retail stores were brought up as possibilities.
The stumbling block for using the second stories currently come from safety and accessibility laws. The second floors would need two exits, i.e. fire escapes. Not all the building have fire escapes nor places to have them installed. The next step down the line is handicap accessibility is required. Conventional thinking means each building would need an elevator.
A proposed solution would be to join several buildings together so that only one in every couple buildings would need the fire escape and elevator.
The idea and hope of getting more retail stores downtown was brought up more than a few times, even after Whitney Finnstrom of Mullin, Lonergan & Associates Incorporated explained twice that retail stores moving into an area were the effect, not the cause, of more people coming down town. That is retail stores go to where the people are, not the other way around.