A bright future
Washington seeking bids for downtown streetlight project
The city of Washington is taking steps to brighten and beautify the downtown area.
Plans are underway to remove 75 to 80 faulty lamppost receptacles and replace them with weather-rated Ground Fault Circuit Interruptors (GFCI) and brighter LED lights. GFCI is a safety device that protects against electric shock by shutting off power to a circuit when it detects an imbalance in flow.
Bids for the project are being accepted until 12:05 p.m. Nov. 3.
“It’s where those beautiful concrete blocks are where light poles have been hit by cars and not replaced,” said Rich Cleveland, city administrator. “There are 75 or 80 lights that are going to be addressed at a cost of about $90,000. We’re doing things to try to create incentives for businesses to come downtown.”
The plan is to address all of the lampposts on Main Street between Walnut and Maiden streets based on the bid. Cleveland said the lights have been there for 15 to 20 years.
“If we don’t get them all, we would do a second phase to address them,” Cleveland said.
The city received a $99,000 grant from the Pennsylvania State Local Share Account fund in 2023 to improve streetlighting in the seven blocks of the downtown business district, as well as the cross streets.
The idea to apply for the money stemmed from an incident at the 2021 Christmas parade in which a young child was lost in the darkness.
A motion on the bids is expected to be made when council meets at 6 p.m. Nov. 6.
The city has taken a number of steps to continue to beautify the downtown area, including redevelopment plans.
“We want to make it more attractive because there’s a lot of people starting to come to the downtown area,” said Mayor JoJo Burgess. “There’s going to be a lot of things that are going to make Washington very appealing to people who just want to be in a smaller town setting.
We’re also right in the middle of South Strabane and North Franklin, which are also having great expansions where the malls used to be. In order to get from one to the other, you have to go through Washington.”
Burgess said specific attention is being paid to ridding the city of blighted properties.
“Hopefully, we’re going to start getting some of these buildings torn down that need to be torn down,” he said.
Earlier this month, council pledged to draft letters of support to the Washington Business District Authority and the Washington Citywide Development Corp.
The WBDA is seeking $150,000 for its facade grant program, and the WCDC is seeking $200,000 to implement a facade and beautification program targeting the gateways into downtown Washington.
“We’ve had our facade grant program, so that’s part of (making the city more attractive),” said Bradley Martin, director of the WBDA and WCDC. “That’s part of trying to get the buildings to just not be in disrepair or just to make improvements that match that style and that historical element that our nice old buildings have and can have.”
Martin explained that the WCDC didn’t have much to do with city beautification in the past, but is looking to change that.
“We’re looking at ways to increase beyond the BDA’s footprint to work on some of that beautification as a responsibility or as a way that the CDC can get involved with that because the BDA is limited to the business district,” he said.
In April, the WBDA received $60,000 as part of Pennsylvania’s Main Street matters program for the President’s Pathway Program. The “pathway” will be a brightly lit, aesthetic walkway for Washington & Jefferson College students to walk safely from the college to downtown. The end of the pathway will be a home for food trucks.
The 2024 Downtown Facade Improvement Grant was geared toward improving the overall appearance of downtown Washington by providing assistance for small businesses and property owners who wished to invest in their property and the overall downtown streetscape. The program, which was funded by the WBDA with the support of the Washington County Local Share Account, granted up to $25,000 for facade improvements for those who qualified.
“These are small steps to get to where we can start redeveloping the entire area so that it’s more attractive to people if they want to be here and stay here,” Burgess said.