A group of citizens and business owners from the Millerstown Area have recently joined together to form Millerstown Community Success, Incorporated, or MCS, Inc., a non-profit organization. The purpose of this committee is to beautify and revitalize the borough of Millerstown while preserving its historical significance.
Millerstown is a small rural community in northeastern Perry County. It is the oldest planned community in the county and at one time had the most stone buildings in the state of Pennsylvania. The surrounding area is agriculture based land and the borough is home to people employed in the town and surrounding areas, including Harrisburg and Lewistown.
We are contacting you in order to solicit support in our endeavors. Our initial goal is to beautify the square of Millerstown with a new streetscape. We have met with an architect and are preparing to make some decisions that will require great financial output and planning. We realize that we will need to meet our goal without burdening the citizens of Millerstown. Your support, either financially, technically, or politically will be greatly appreciated.
Sincerely,
Millerstown Community Success, Inc.
MCS, Inc.
, the new Millerstown Community Success organization, met on Feb. 26th to finalize plans to officially incorporate the group as a non-profit, volunteer effort, and therefore become eligible for state and federal grant money. A successful cleanup and planting of the town square highlighted the groups commitment to its cause.
The group is presently seeking an individual with artistic ability to help provide a conceptual drawing of the square as it may look in the future after improvements are implemented. Please contact them at 589-7263, if interested.
Thanks also to all the many folks who gave us the generous contributions and donations at the 4th of July at Freedom Park. We will use these funds to continue our efforts to make improvements to our town.
Concerning the formation of the Citizens Revitalization Effort ...
Understanding that a focused effort is needed, residents, businesses and borough officials have come together to implement the goals of the Mission Statement.
"Millerstown Community Success, Incorporated" or 'MCS, Inc.', is a brand new grassroots, non-profit organization of the citizens of Millerstown. Their goal is to unite citizens to improve the appearance of the community and overall attitude of citizens toward Millerstown. This group wants citizens to be proud of their hometown.
Specific Objectives of "MCS, Inc." include:
Coordinating the selection process for an independent facilitator/consultant to help the committee and partnership groups structure revitalization planning activities and recommendations.
Establishing the vision / mission for the revitalization process along with guiding principles, goals and objectives.
Analyzing opportunities for new and innovative solutions to future improvements employing best practices of other successful communities.
Cultivating broad-based discussion with Millerstown's citizens and with key constituent groups to disseminate information and to gather input on issues, opportunities and alternatives.
Compiling information, reporting findings, and making recommendations to civic leaders for short- and long-term improvements to the community/downtown area.
Suggesting funding opportunities and optimal sequencing for priorities.
Our town was built on the agriculture of the county. This industry shaped our community. Our downtown served everyone. It was the place where you traded your livestock or goods, bought groceries, saw the doctor, sold your crops, got your prescription filled, saw a movie, and the list goes on and on. Our heritage is crucial to who we are today. It’s a mirror. It tells us who we are, how we got here, and where we want to go. Its prosperity and forward thinking enabled Millerstown to grow to where it is today. Our heritage deserves to be remembered and preserved. Our downtown reflects our past and can define our future. It tells the outside world what type of community we are. We must cherish and preserve our past, our heritage, and the unique character of our town square, all the while embracing the future.
This is a project that we hope takes hold in many, small ways. By engaging the memories of what once was we can imagine our future and begin to see it re-emerge…one person, one idea, and one memory at a time. We are not in competition with malls, builders and big stores. That’s not what our effort is about. It is all about a sense of place. The dream for our downtown is simple yet complex. We'd like to see townspeople sit on the square and eat their lunch together. We'd like to see folks sitting on benches in the square on a sunny day. We want trees to cool us in the summer. We want buildings and businesses that beckon us to enter. We want visitors to be so enchanted that they return again and again. We'd like residents to find the goods and services and atmosphere that they need just a short walk from their homes. We'd like the downtown to be the place to come to. We want our downtown to have grace, dignity and charm. We want our downtown to be the thriving pulse of Millerstown. We want downtown to remind us of why we choose to live and stay in Millerstown. We want downtown to anchor our sense of place and inspire the community to make dreams happen. Some of the things we would like to accomplish are as follows:
Create landscape buffers between the sidewalk and parking areas along the square thoroughfare.
Add street trees to this buffer, where appropriate, to provide scale and shade.
Using the sidewalk and curb system create clear and definite entries and exits to commercial establishments.
Provide decorative, vintage-style lighting that is scaled to the pedestrian versus automobile traffic, thus adding a scale element with detail and interest.
Add benches and planters along points and perimeter of the square.
Initiate improvements, landscaping and lighting to the two traffic islands which help to define our square.
"MCS, Inc." is a preservation-based , improvement- focused organization working cooperatively within our community and with local, state and federal government to bring the resources and expertise to bear that we need to help ourselves revitalize downtown and our entire community.
Our group consists entirely of community volunteers who will organize and implement all projects and activities, striving to make our community all it can and should be! We want the best of the old, the best of the new, the best that is yet to come.