The borough of Tamaqua was recently highlighted in an edition of Business View Magazine, which shares business profiles, news and opinion with its 840,000 North American subscribers.

The feature, “A Thriving and Dynamic Borough,” is part of the magazine’s series on economic growth and best city practices.

Tamaqua Mayor Nathan Gerace and Dan Evans, chairman of the Community Revitalization and Improvement Zone Authority, weigh in, and writers noted that they also spoke to borough Treasurer Timothy M. Ziegler and Secretary Tonia Sakusky.

The article says that Tamaqua was once a thriving coal town that faced economic decline in the 1950s, but has found a way to reinvent itself.

“Tamaqua has done particularly well at bouncing back, and revitalization is the name of the game,” Gerace told the magazine. “When you look at a lot of the things that have happened around our community, especially over the last 20 years, you’ve seen a great boom in economic development, in revitalization. We are an ideal example of small-town America.”

The article talks about renewal in Tamaqua’s downtown, including the businesses that have made their homes there.

Gerace speaks of the success of the Tamaqua Arts Center, calling it a “beacon of revitalization” that hosts concerts, plays, crafts and yoga, and talks about the revitalization of the buildings that now house Hope & Coffee, The Bischoff Inn and the Tamaqua Station Restaurant.

“Much of this growth and resurgence can be attributed to economic development initiatives like the Tax Increment Financing (TIF) program and the Community Revitalization and Improvement Zone (C.R.I.Z.) that Tamaqua has leveraged to breathe new life into the area. However, Dan Evans, Chairman of the Tamaqua C.R.I.Z. Authority acknowledges that the impact can be traced back two decades or more, to the Tamaqua Area Community Partnership,” according to the article.

“The partnership has a big role in what you see up and down Broad Street, it’s stopped some of the decay and began to reverse that process that we saw when coal ended,” Evans tells the magazine. “Twenty years ago, they began to lay out a variety of strategies for the community, things like downtown revitalization.”

He also credits other groups, including community organizations, Tamaqua and Schuylkill chambers of commerce, Northeast Pennsylvania Alliance, Wilkes University Small Business Development Group, and past and current state and federal elected officials.

The feature tells of investing in infrastructure for housing needs, and a new police department and community center.

“We want to encourage new businesses to make their way into Tamaqua, to see that it’s a thriving community. It’s flourishing with great residents, people who are spending time downtown, spending their money here. If somebody’s interested in being a small-business owner, there’s no better place to invest than Tamaqua,” Gerace told the magazine.

The complete article is at https://businessviewmagazine.com/tamaqua-pennsylvania-schuylkill-county/