Welcome to our Virtual Main Street!

Hi everyone! This is Mike Schlossberg with the Borough Business Revitalization Program. First, let me welcome you to our blog and explain a little bit about who we are and what we are trying to do here.

The Borough Business Revitalization Program is a regional Main Street program that is run through the Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce. We are a partnership of the GLVCC, Pennsylvania Department of Economic Development, Lehigh and Northampton counties, and the nine participating boroughs (Alburtis, Bath, Bangor, Catasauqua, Coopersburg, Hellertown, Macungie, North Catasauqua and Wilson). The goal of this program is to revitalize the Main Streets of these nine boroughs. There are two coordinators for this program - myself (mikes@lehighvalleychamber.org) and Mark Hartney (markh@lehighvalleychamber.org).

We are not, by any stretch of the imagination, the only organization that is trying to help Main Streets across the Valley. There are other Main and Elm Street programs throughout the Valley, and I am hopeful that they will take part in this blog as well.

My goal for this blog is that we can all use it to share ideas, events and information that can assist us all in our revitalization efforts. At the same time, I want to make sure that the public at large is familiar with our efforts. It has become abundantly clear over the past few years that the internet is an outstanding medium for communication, and I think that any organization that fails to properly utilize it is doing a grave disservice to themselves. I'd like to take this opportunity to invite any Main Street Coordinator and Manager, as well as any Downtown Manager and urban revitalization specialist, to participate in this blog. In particular, I want to ask our outstanding volunteers to feel free to participate as well. I encourage you to respond to posts in the "comments" section that follows each blog, as well as E-mail me (again, Mikes@lehighvalleychamber.org) with posts that you would like me to display on the blog.

Again, it is my pleasure to bring our Main Street and revitalization efforts to the internet! I hope to hear from you all soon!

Mike Schlossberg
mikes@lehighvalleychamber.org