Chatham grad students collaborate with Mars on downtown redevelopment
Mars residents shouldn’t be particularly surprised to see a group of Chatham University graduate students return to the borough to solicit feedback from locals in the coming weeks.
The ongoing collaboration between the borough of Mars and Chatham University continues this year. Students from classes run by professors Roy Weitzell and Darnell Moses of the Eden Hall campus of Chatham are working together with the borough to gather information for a report on downtown revitalization.
“Historically, a lot of times when projects are done in communities, for infrastructure or essential businesses, those decisions are made or were made often times without the input of the residents,” said Moses, a visiting assistant professor of equitable and sustainable communities with the Falk School of Sustainability & Environment.
“What this class is working on is understanding how that dynamic is changing. It's sort of thinking about leadership through a different lens and understanding how that old leadership model is now transitioning to one that is more sustainable.”
For the past month, the group of 18 students in the “Leadership for Transitions to Sustainability” course have collected feedback on how the Mars downtown area could be improved using an online survey.
The survey closed at the end of October, and students plan to continue gathering information through in-person discussion sessions with the public, the first of which will be from 6 to 8 p.m. Nov. 3 at the Mars Area Public Library.
“What we thought might be good was taking a look at the central business district, to see if there were some improvements that could be made to the businesses,” Moses said. “Some of the infrastructure is somewhat old or outdated, like sidewalks, accessibility ramps, and some of the curbing, and things of that nature. We’re looking at if there can be some improvements made to the business district that would allow (more) people to come to the district.”
The students’ survey garnered around 70 responses, which Moses said was a “great number” for a survey of this nature. Students also talked with residents at the Mars Applefest event in early October.
“We asked questions like, how often did you visit the central business district? When you do visit, what is the business you most often frequent? Would there perhaps be any new infrastructure that you would want to see in the borough?” he explained. “We asked them to rank that information and talk about areas in the business district that they have seen that might be in disrepair or be in good shape. Things like parking, parks or green spaces, condition of sidewalks safety, business storefronts, and things of that nature.”
The graduate students have a lot of autonomy in how they collect their data, Moses explained. The end product of the class will be a presentation and report that’s shared with borough officials in late December.
“I don’t want to come in and tell them what they should do,” he said. “My goal is to present ideas and present topics, and in a collaborative way, discuss what process they think we should go about in learning or gathering some of this information.”
At upcoming discussion sessions with the community, the students will conduct a “SWOT analysis,” a tool used to examine the “strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats” around a topic.
“It's a tool that can be used to gain additional information about what people may want to see,” Moses said. “We’re using that in this particular context as it specifically relates to the central business district.”
Mars mayor Gregg Hartung has worked with each year’s cohort of Chatham sustainability students, attending their presentations in which they discussed their analyses of the community. He recalled a previous year’s study from 2018 that also focused on downtown revitalization.
“We talked about access to various businesses and types of businesses that you might want to locate in a small town,” he said. “The following year we worked more with Roy and (Thomas Macagno’s) class on MS4 and the stream restoration and Breakneck Watershed issues. We’ve circled back this time to talk more about where some things are at within the development of the community regarding what people are looking for."
Hartung looks forward to building on the previous years’ studies, but added that much of the work and decisions in putting together the report are up to the members of the class.
“I'm leaving it up to the class to sort out what might be viable, and what might be maybe a good foundation for the next stage of how Mars develops as a community,” he said. “Being able to have this as a benchmark to see what some people got done and what some people have felt did not get done might be helpful, just to be able to measure things.”
For the students involved in the course, the project is a chance to gain real-world experience, Moses said.
“We are trying to provide these types of opportunities in this part of the county, where we haven’t had as much of a presence. We are trying to do more to build those types of relationships,” Moses said. “It will give the students the opportunity to experience these types of projects, and to give value to our partners as well, as they get to see through a different lens some things they could be working on in their communities.”
