Jeannette Rising event planned to bolster Main Street Matters designation for city

The Jeannette Initiative is looking for residents and businesses that want to have a hand in improving the city as they prepare to seek a Main Street Matters designation through the state.

Program manager Kristie Linden is leading the charge in a new role she hopes will spark a transformation.

“More than anything, we need to know that the community supports the ideas that we have and that they’re behind us,” she said.

Initiative board members hope to get that feedback Wednesday during Jeannette Rising, an event from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at the American Legion at 109 S. Fifth St. The public is invited to attend and, Linden hopes, get involved.

The initiative has created five committees — focusing on organization, design, business development, marketing and safe, clean and green — as it prepares to seek the designation. Main Street Matters is a program through the state Department of Community and Economic Development that provides funding to support revitalization efforts.

As part of the application to the program, Linden said the Jeannette Initiative has to show how it will accomplish and fund projects identified by those five committees and what it will take to sustain the effort beyond five years. She hopes to have the application in to the state by the end of August.

At the Wednesday event, committee members will break into groups and participants can learn more about the ideas and see how they would best fit into helping.

While the Main Street Matters program focuses on core business districts, Linden hopes the revitalization would spread.

“We know in Jeannette that we have to look at it across the board, we want everything to be better,” she said.

Linden was recently hired as a part-time project manager to help the Jeannette Initiative with the application. She has lived in the city for 15 years and was editor of the former Jeannette Spirit newspaper, with 25 years of involvement in the region as a journalist.

Jeannette needs a group that will take a clear look at the city’s needs and follow through on ideas and projects, she said.

“We want that to work,” she said. “We want this to be successful.”