New PAID director: Pottstown poised for success
POTTSTOWN » Peggy LeeClark believes that “Pottstown is on the verge.”
As a former member of the board of the Pottstown Area Industrial Development Corp. and its newly hired executive director, she is in a position to know.
As head of the separate, non-profit entity, Lee-Clark now holds the post of the borough’s top economic development officer, separate from the borough but working in partnership.
“Great things are going to happen, but we’ll get there faster once people stop believing the value of some properties is more than it is at this point,” she said.
“We have some architectural gems in Pottstown, but many of them require a lot of work to bring them up to modern standards and investors have to understand that if a new business has to invest too much in the building, it won’t have enough capital to be successful,” Lee-Clark said.
At the same time, developers “can’t be wed to one idea, they have to be fluid as conditions, both market conditions and the conditions on the ground, change.”
Pottstown’s greatest asset, Lee-Clark said, “is its diversity of available properties. This is not a onesize-fits-all community,” she said.
“We have spaces in a traditional downtown setting, we have office and industrial park properties on the Circle of Progress and we have older industrial properties waiting to be reimagined,” Lee-Clark said.
One of her favorite’s in this category is the former Prince’s Bakery building at 113 S. Washington St.
At the June 20 joint meeting of Pottstown Borough Council and the Pottstown School Board, LeeClark said the building, vacant for many years now, is under agreement of sale, with closing expected to occur sometime in July.
Three partners intend to establish a restaurant on the site, she said.
Another under-used space soon to be occupied are the upper floors of the BB&T Bank building at the corner of High and North Hanover streets, Lee-Clark told the joint meeting.
Cedarville Engineering, LLC, a civil and environmental engineering firm is moving from Chester County into the top two floors of the building — long unoccupied, she said.
An agreement expected soon will install an office use in the space formerly occupied by the Giant supermarket on State Street, before it moved across Route 100 into West Pottsgrove, Lee-Clark said.
Also nearing completion is engineering work to “set the table” for development for 255 acres along Keystone Boulevard, a joint project between the borough and West Pottsgrove Township.
It is expected to become more commercially attractive with the pending realignment of the Grosstown Road interchange off Route 422, she told the joint meeting.
Lee-Clark also told the joint meeting that essentially, while all these efforts are positive, she was giving a report on the past year’s activities which occurred under her predecessor, Steve Bamford, who left Jan. 7 to take a new job in Allentown.
Lee-Clark was approached by the board to serve as interim director, she said, and a search committee was formed and conducted six or seven interviews, one of which was Lee-Clark.
“I put my hat in the ring,” Lee-Clark said and she was one of three finalists and was chosen for the $86,000-a-year job. Her first official day was May 1.
Having celebrated the successes of her predecessor, Lee-Clark is now laying the groundwork for some successes by the successor.
“I recognize how unique PAID is as Pottstown’s lead economic development arm,” Lee-Clark said. Because of its unique tax status, which allows it to raise and hold money, “it’s nimble.”
One of the first orders of business, literally, is to begin work on updating the borough’s economic development plan — the last of which was completed in 2008, something she hopes to have completed by the first quarter of 2018.
“We need to get a good mix. How many microbreweries is a good mix? How do we get a better mix of hotels, bed and breakfasts?” she said.
Lee-Clark noted that there is some planning now in the “early stages” for a hotel connected to Sunnybrook Ballroom on adjacent property located in the borough, aided by a $200,000 state grant obtained by PAID for a “market feasibility study” there.
Another initiative will be to re-design the PAID website “to make it proactive instead of reactive, with a list of what’s available for businesses, highlighting available properties with information about parking, zoning, permits — things like that,” Lee-Clark said.
“We want the website to be a driver for getting in touch with those who want to develop, and to use social media to them to our web site,” she said.
Its through these tools, that PAID can best undertake its primary job, said Lee-Clark, “connecting like-minded visionaries.”
And then, she said, guide them through the development process, a process made smoother in recent years by getting entrepreneurs and borough officials together at the early stages of planning — so each knows what to expect of the other.
She is also a believer in “making use of the educational resources we have at hand to promote an educated work force.”
Lee-Clark would know a thing or two about that.
Before taking this post, she was executive director of government relations and special projects as well as assistant to the president of Montgomery County Community College.
Prior to that, she was a full-time faculty member teaching marketing and management.
In addition to her time on the PAID board, LeeClark has served on the Greater Valley Forge Hotel Association, the Valley Forge Tourism and Convention Board’s marketing committee, the TriCounty Area Chamber of Commerce.
“I’m really, kind of a Jill of all trades,” Lee-Clark said with a laugh.