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Making the Connections, Part 6

The history of Southwestern Pennsylvania has always been one of a people looking forward with a creative and industrious spirit - from the founding of Fort Pitt 250 years ago, to the medical and technological breakthroughs of the 21st Century. When the Allegheny Conference on Community Development began planning to celebrate the region’s 250th anniversary this year, the organization knew it had to do so with that same forward-looking spirit.

The Conference charged a committee of regional representatives with a mission: To build a program that would actively engage the people of Southwestern Pennsylvania in Pittsburgh 250. Community Connections was developed to create relationships, provide community engagement opportunities, and spur regional pride through an innovative grantmaking model that ultimately funded 100 projects across 14 counties of Southwestern Pennsylvania.

Community Connections engaged the citizens of Southwestern Pennsylvania in a pioneering process to create, streamline, and invest $1 million in a diverse array of community projects. Each month in Making the Connections, we’ll take a closer look at the story behind Community Connections.

History Lesson: Community Connections as part of Pittsburgh 250

The 250-year-long history of the Pittsburgh region comes with plenty of high-voltage historical moments – tremors on the timeline, when no one could help but sit up and take notice of Southwestern Pennsylvania. It would’ve been hard to miss the steel that flowed by train, night and day, to build the Empire State Building. Schoolchildren still read of the French & Indian War, and of Lewis & Clark, and still sing the songs of Stephen Foster and watch Mr. Rogers.

But what would these be if not tempered by an equally important but more subtle set of historical moments that occurred, not in the glare of history’s spotlight, but in small rooms throughout the region. Jonas Salk’s hours in a University of Pittsburgh lab, working on his polio vaccine; the births of Gertrude Stein and Andy Warhol; Gus Greenlee in the back of his Crawford Grill, helping groom an entire generation of jazz – “America’s classical music.”

Just as history is made equally in and out of the spotlight, this year’s celebration of Pittsburgh’s 250th anniversary is comprised of projects and events both large and small, splashy and subtle. And from the beginning, says Bill Flanagan – executive director of the Pittsburgh 250 initiative – that’s been a part of the initiative’s plan: To eschew the ‘birthday party’ in favor of an open-ended concept.

It’s a vision that Bill Flanagan believes in tirelessly, and almost religiously. From BBQs in Somerset County to the opening of newly resurfaced tennis courts in Regent Square, Flanagan is there, not just preaching the word of the 250, but soaking in the glow of its successes, and taking its few shortcomings personally.

“We wanted to be really careful not to just tell everybody how to celebrate this anniversary,” says Flanagan, speaking quickly with a confident passion. “As [Pittsburgh 250 chairman] Jim Rohr said, ‘we’re not throwing a party.’ We’re going to set a framework, and allow people to come forward with their own ideas for what to do. It’s grown organically as it’s gone forward, so a lot of things are happening now that weren’t part of the conversation in 2005.”

Take, for example, cycling: In 2005, when the parent organization that launched Pittsburgh 250, the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, first announced its early plans for this year, ‘cycling’ was nowhere to be found on the agenda. The Great Allegheny Passage cycle trail, the D.C.-to-Pittsburgh PNC Legacy Trail Ride on October 4, the Tour of PA pro cycle race this past summer – none of these signature projects were in the initial Pittsburgh 250 playbook.

Flanagan admits that some people in the community have been frustrated by this ever-changing nature. But he points out that this lack of singular cohesion is also one of Pittsburgh 250’s strongest points: The flexibility to allow for the very innovation that has been the initiative’s watchword since day one.

That flexibility, and the concentration on a diverse and a less hierarchical approach to Pittsburgh 250’s makeup, is what allowed and encouraged the spawning of Community Connections. As Flanagan recalls, all that was handed down to the original Community Connections planning committee was a mission, a vague outline, and a name.

“Our feasibility consultants in 2005 identified a program from Virginia, from the Jamestown 400, called ‘community connections,’” says Flanagan. “It was just an [online] map of Virginia, and you could click anywhere in the state and see what was being done to improve those communities for the future. It was really as simple as a calendar – where we differed significantly from Jamestown was raising a pool of money to encourage and seed those projects. Then we left it to the folks on the committee and at Sprout to figure out how to do it!”

The innovation, Flanagan says, was in the process: Approaching communities and engaging them in the project creation and decision-making process. The result – the 100 projects of Community Connections – follows the Pittsburgh 250 mission of letting communities, organizations and individuals decide for themselves what is the best, most creative and useful way to celebrate the anniversary.

And in many instances, real synergies have emerged to create new foci for Pittsburgh 250: Flanagan points to the Trail Town Public Art project, building new public art works along the towns dotting the Great Allegheny Passage pathway (the completion of which is, itself, a Pittsburgh 250 signature project) as one example. But whatever the project, the important connection is in its unique importance to its specific community.

“I love the Wild Waterways project, building boat launches on the Connoquenessing Creek,” says Flanagan. “This area that’s threatened by suburban sprawl – here’s an initiative that may allow that stream, and those recreational assets, to be preserved and accessed even as it may become surrounded by such sprawl.”

One of the other founding principles of the Pittsburgh 250 concept was that it be a regional effort, crossing city and county lines and encompassing, not just the ten counties that the Allegheny Conference usually cites as its area of interest, but a full 14 counties of Southwestern PA. Included were counties such as Bedford – founded in 1758 by the same bushwhacking military march that resulted in Pittsburgh’s founding – and Cambria County, where the close steel industry ties have bound the area inexorably to Pittsburgh for a century. In that way, too, Flanagan points out, Community Connections has played a vital role in Pittsburgh 250’s success.

“The economy these days is not city against city,” says Flanagan. “It’s region competing with region. We made that decision early on – to be a regional effort – and once we decided that, we had to figure out, ‘how do you include everybody in a meaningful way?’ In some places, like Bedford and Ligonier, which are also celebrating anniversaries this year, it was easy. But what about the other counties? That’s where the Community Connections idea came in – that of a shared celebration.”

A regional effort, incorporating the highly localized, small and subtle projects funded by Community Connections’ Grassroots grants, as well as the bigger efforts like encouraging homecomings and reunions throughout the year and a coordinated regional marketing campaign and the highly touted signature projects of Pittsburgh 250: these efforts combined make up the final vision of Pittsburgh’s 250th anniversary. Flanagan is convinced that it’s this same open-ended vision that we’ll look back on in another decade as yet another historic moment for Pittsburgh.

“We pushed the decisionmaking way down,” says Flanagan. “I hope that will make it reflective of what these communities feel is important for them. And some of these projects will leave very real legacies. I’ll be curious, ten years from now, to look at what seeds we’ve planted, and what’s grown from them. Will we look back on 2008 as a galvanizing moment – a tipping point – when things suddenly changed, and new trends emerged?”

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