Businesses, volunteers restoring life and hope in Brownsville
The question from the retired guy in the yoga class was the kind of thing a kid might ask: “I’m interested in planting some flowers in Brownsville. Can you help me?”
“I kind of laughed,” yoga teacher Laura Patterson remembered about the inquiry from Joe Barantovich. That was a couple of years ago. Now, she has a different view about their meeting and the changes spawned by their partnership.
“It’s really been a true catalyst,” said Ms. Patterson, 39, a lifelong Fayette County resident who owns a wellness center in Brownsville, a postage stamp-size borough about 40 miles south of Pittsburgh.
The Fayette County Chamber of Commerce, Brownsville Area Chamber of Commerce, elected officials and others did the ribbon-and-giant-scissors thing Friday at 11 businesses that have opened in recent months in the Brownsville area: a 33,000-square-foot grocery store in Redstone and a
barbershop, cigar store, deli and others in the borough. It was the chamber’s biggest one-day ribbon-cutting in its 50-year history, the business booster group said.
Brownsville, a gritty Monongahela River town with a coal and steel history, was overdue for a good day. The borough has been losing ground since the mines played out and the mills closed in the early 1980s.
About 700 of the town’s 2,000 residents earn less than $12,700 a year for an individual, $17,240 for a family of two, meeting the federal guidelines for impoverished. The biggest employer in the borough, where the population peaked at more than 8,000 in 1940, is the Brownsville Ambulance Service.
Mayor Ross Swords admits that Brownsville doesn’t have the “best-looking downtown.” Just don’t speak ill of it, he snapped. That would be “like talking bad about a family member,” the 36-year-old mayor said.
“I think you’re going to see a rebirth in Brownsville.”
Things started happening in Brownsville about the time of the meeting in the yoga class: Along with new businesses, the town library — facing closure in 2019 due to money problems — is now planning an expansion after receiving a $250,000 state grant while the borough continues snapping up vacant buildings for rehabilitation.
Along the way, flowers got planted around town and dilapidated buildings got a fresh coat of paint with the help of students from the local high school.
“It just makes everybody feel better,” said Lori Barron, 40, Brownsville Free Public Library director. “People seem nicer.”
Uniontown native Darnell Samuel said the sprucing up shows visitors that people care. “It brings life to the businesses,” the 44-yearold said. “It attracts so many people.”
He chose a storefront on Market Street, Brownsville’s main drag, to open a barbershop in January. That was one of the stops for Friday’s marathon ribbon-cutting.
Among the people a beaming Mr. Samuel thanked Friday was the mayor, who he said personally trimmed the tree outside his shop.
Mr. Barantovich, 68, a native of Brownsville, taught high school physical education and English in Miami for 35 years, returning home to spend holidays with his parents who lived in the borough. His parents have since died, and he now spends his summers at his parents’ home in Brownsville and winters at a home in Florida.
“I just wanted to plant some flowers,” he said. “It would make me feel better driving through town. I knew I could do it myself if I had to.”
Turns out, he didn’t have to do it himself: More than 100 volunteers turned out last year to pick up trash, trim trees and dress up vacant lots with flowers, all kinds. A second planting and cleanup day is scheduled for Saturday.
Last year, Mr. Barantovich and Ms. Patterson cofounded the Brownsville Perennial Project, a nonprofit community group, which received nearly $10,000 this year from the Laurel Highlands Visitors Bureau to continue work in the community.
Coincidentally, new businesses began opening amid downtown’s abandoned buildings about the time the flowers began sprouting.
“We’ve got kids here, adults here, who haven’t known anything but the blight that Brownsville was,” Mr. Barantovich said. “We’re just trying to change the conversation. I’m just happy to be part of it.”
Ms. Patterson, who has a degree in landscape architecture from West Virginia University, said she quickly embraced his idea. Brownsville needs to create a future for young people, so students understand “they don’t necessarily have to run away at full speed after graduation,” she said. “That’s a major problem in these small towns.”
The borough has had painful false starts in the past. In the 1990s, a Pittsburgh area couple bought up more than 100 properties, many of them historic. They planned to create a tourist attraction, with entertainment, shopping and nightlife.
But the properties became derelict and tax delinquent, the dreams of a resort evaporated and the borough began acquiring the properties by eminent domain.
This time around is different, Ms. Patterson said: “Every time everybody counts us out, we stand back up.”