Chamber’s leadership program learns what makes southern Butler County tick
The Leadership Butler County program took an in-depth look at southern Butler County Friday.
The “Southern Butler County Day,” organized by the Butler County Chamber of Commerce, featured conversations about the southern half of the county, which were held various locations in Cranberry Township.
“This is obviously the major growth area of Butler County,” Leadership Butler County board member Mark Buchek said. “We wanted to expose those in the class to what makes this township tick.”
The event started early Friday morning at the Cranberry Township Municipal Center with a talk from Cranberry Township’s director of planning and development services, Ron Henshaw, who covered the ongoing development in the area.
The group also took a tour of the traffic control center in Cranberry Township.
“The Leadership Butler County program brings exposure to everything throughout the county,” Buchek said. “Whenever we help out with these sessions, there is someone who says I never knew this was here.”
Around lunch time, the group moved to Regional Learning Alliance’s Learning and Conference Center, for a panel discussion that featured local government leaders and business association representatives.
The panel discussed a range of topics, starting with how their regions and businesses are dealing with and overcoming some obstacles presented by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We made sure our businesses knew where the opportunities were to find money,” Butler County Tourism & Convention Bureau President Jack Cohen said. “We work a lot with the government, so we were able to track down grants, loans and different things for all of them.”
In early May, during the tourism bureau’s annual Toast to Tourism Dinner, Cohen was able to award 28 grants totaling $100,000 to travel and tourism businesses within Butler County.
“We had to do it,” Cohen said. “We try our best to make sure our businesses are whole. It’s the first time we have given that type of money away.”
In previous years, the tourism bureau had given $50,000 in grant money during the event.
With panelists from all over Butler County with different experiences, they touched upon how townships and boroughs can come together more often and have each others backs.
“Each of us are trying to find ways how we can communicate and collaborate more with each other,” Mars Borough Mayor Gregg Hartung said. “There is all sorts of opportunities for us to move forward in some interesting ways.”
Some of the areas in the county have come a long way in revitalizing their communities, with more businesses and incentives to bring those businesses in, but with more business brings different problems.
“We have had probably 10 new businesses open on Main Street,” Erika Shumaker of the Zelienople Business Association said. “Parking then has become and issue with people driving around in circles trying to park so that is something we are trying to fix.”
Growth in these communities clearly have its benefits, but there are some people around that wish things could be the way they were.
“There are some naysayers that do not want that growth there, and they want the old Zelienople,” Shumaker said. “A lot of business owners in Zelienople have more than one business. When they open a new one, we want them to bring something the town doesn’t have already.”
Once the panel discussion came to a close, those in attendance toured the Regional Learning Alliance facility and the UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex.
“It’s just what the program is about,” Buchek said. “Once students are done and graduate from the program, they can take some type of leadership role in whatever institution, nonprofit or business they are looking for.”
