The newly-lit steeple of the Evangelical Lutheran Christ Church in Lancaster City’s South West Quarter is something of a finale for Lancaster City Alliance’s latest facade improvement programme.

The $500,000 initiative launched in 2019 has helped organize and fund approximately 100 mostly residential and commercial exterior renovations in select areas of the city – a strategy to breathe new life into buildings in the neighborhood where homeowners might not have had the money to do it otherwise.

Grants from local and regional foundations are almost fully spent, said Jeremy Young, director of community and economic development at the nonprofit City Alliance. The organization runs a slew of economic development programs for downtown businesses and increasingly neighborhood-based initiatives, now wants to sell the successes of the program to keep it going with a new infusion of donors.

A previous version of the program focused on improving downtown storefronts – North Queen Street in particular – Young said.

In this round, the Lancaster County Community Foundation’s Truist Economic Growth Fund, the High Foundation, the Wells Fargo Regional Foundation, the Steinman Foundation, and a state grant from the Department of Community and Economic Development all contributed $500,000 to the program. $.

The Steinman Foundation is a local, independent family foundation funded by the companies that make up Steinman Communications; these companies include LNP Media Group.

For the church, the new lighting comes at a time when the congregation has restored the building to much of its original 1890s character, said J. Wesley Burrows, finance chairman of the board of directors of the Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church. The work is part of an effort to make the building more accessible to non-member residents of the neighborhood.

An adjacent building owned by the church is now leased to the Literacy Council of Lancaster-Lebanon, which has been a boon in linking the mostly out-of-town congregation to neighborhood residents.

“Adding the tower and the windows to what we’re doing is right – everyone is so happy with how it looks inside and out,” Burrows said. “We have more plans for the landscaping and things outside, so lighting up the tower and the windows and so on just added to the look we’re looking for in a full restoration.”

The new lights highlight the historic brick facade and stained glass windows of the church.

After more than 100 completed projects, Young said, the City Alliance has put together a waiting list of several dozen homeowners interested in help, if the program gets new funding.

Regrouping projects bear fruit

So far, the City Alliance has focused the program on commercial corridors like Columbia Avenue and West King Street on the west side of the city, and on the entire southwest neighborhood.

A key to the program’s popularity may be the posters that residents have placed in front of their renovated homes to advertise the program.

Madra Clay, a resident of the 300 block of West King Street, said that was how she first found out.

“I was able to get the front part of the roof of my house done, paint around the windows and doors, and put in some lighting,” Clay said.

Other residents were also able to use the funding, usually around $5,000, to install new windows and doors for their homes, as long as they faced the street.

Most participants are required to contribute 10% of the grant, Young said, but the City Alliance has also been able to work with residents who cannot afford it by using the city’s main sanitation program as funding. counterpart.

Old windows and doors with decades-old paint may qualify for a remediation. They can be a common source of lead poisoning in the home, Young said. When you open and close them, he says, the friction can stir up microscopic dust that contains lead.

The City Alliance approached the church with the idea, Burrows said. The scheme has partly focused on adding a bit of sparkle to the thoroughfares that visitors and residents use to enter the city and downtown – in this case, West King Street.

The program’s biggest success, Young said, comes from the ripple effect the projects can have around neighboring properties. A restored facade on one property prompted neighboring owners to undertake their own maintenance projects without any special funding, Young said.

This snowball effect is evident on West King Street, Clay said.

“When I go out to walk my dogs at night, I don’t look over my shoulders – I feel safer because the neighborhood has improved,” said Clay, who has lived in his West King Street home since. 1999.

Recognized youth programs like the Facade Improvement Grant can be a double-edged sword.

Longtime residents of urban neighborhoods across the country have learned to associate new investments and improvements with displacement. As areas became more attractive to wealthier residents, tenants in particular often found themselves priced out and their communities fractured.

This concern, said Young, “has led to our intentional effort to really prioritize homeowners in this program because we recognize that taking advantage of our grant provides these homeowners with the opportunity to build capital and hopefully strengthen their roots in their neighborhood”.

Of those more than 100 projects, 78% of the properties were residential and 22% were mixed-use, typically a ground-floor storefront with upstairs apartments, Young said.

The City Alliance also worked with Tenfold, a Lancaster-based nonprofit, to work with landlords on capital improvements, Young said. In exchange for low-interest loans, landlords agreed to a pact restricting rents for several years.

If the City Alliance gets more money to continue the program, Young hopes it can expand to other parts of the city like the southeast and northeast, he said.

Recent changes near Clay’s house, partly due to the facade improvement program, have been enormous, she said.

“It’s definitely a place I want to stay for a long time if I can.”