<\/p>\n
Beth Hammack, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, toured downtown Erie on Friday, meeting with local leaders and business owners to discuss the impact of the current economy on the region.<\/p>\n
During her visit, Hammack heard both optimism about Erie\u2019s revitalization efforts and concerns about the financial pressures facing residents and businesses.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I took away was two things, it one: you got a community that is really pulling together, who cares about their downtown and is trying to create an amazing experience, but I also heard in here in Country Fair about how people are struggling, how individuals have continued to trade down, how their paychecks, a lot of them are asking to be paid every single day because they are living day-by-day,\u201d said Hammack.<\/p>\n
Hammack is one of 19 members of the Federal Open Market Committee, the group responsible for setting the federal funds rate and guiding national monetary policy.<\/p>\n
Her Erie tour included stops at Modern Tool Square, Ember and Forge, the Flagship City Food Hall and the Country Fair Flagship Store. Discussions focused on economic development, consumer spending habits and the impact of higher interest rates on commercial investment projects downtown.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt challenging right now,\u201d said Hammack. \u201cI heard this morning that teams are looking at doing some more investing in commercial projects, but the mortgage rates are just higher than they have been used to and its making it a struggle to get those projects together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite those challenges, Hammack praised Erie\u2019s collaborative approach to downtown revitalization and the partnerships working to attract new investment and activity to the city center.<\/p>\n
Local leaders said the visit highlighted Erie\u2019s growing importance in broader economic discussions.<\/p>\n
\u201c When the Fed chair shows up and asks the questions of not just people like me and our mayor and our county executive but is speaking with the people that are shopping in the grocery store, that are running the small businesses on the street,\u201d said Whiting. \u201cThe hope is that what they\u2019re hearing is a reflection of reality on the ground and the policies that they have the ability to influence are being pushed in the direction that helps all of us and not just a few people in town.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Beth Hammack, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, toured downtown Erie on Friday, meeting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193564,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[86183,1160,136,138,137,86182,21402],"class_list":["post-193563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-erie","tag-beth-hammack","tag-economic-development","tag-erie","tag-erie-headlines","tag-erie-news","tag-federal-reserve-bank-of-cleveland","tag-interest-rates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}