<\/p>\n
The Erie Downtown Development Corporation set out on an ambitious agenda for 2025.<\/p>\n
It included bringing in a Country Fair Store to solve a food desert issues, after another grocer left, helping Serafini\u2019s bring an old sauce recipe and a new restaurant and bar into the historic Cashier\u2019s House, and reopening Dave\u2019s Diner at 5th and Peach in the EDDC\u2019s new multi-use building.<\/p>\n
What CEO Drew Whiting says they have done, is give Erie the diversity of amenities it wants in the downtown area. Now, he says Erie needs to do its part to support those small businesses. \u201cIt’s easy to support locally owned small businesses too,\u201d Whiting said. \u201cThey’re people that everybody can relate to. their families are all in on everything they’re doing because it matters, and when they generate wealth in the community it goes to the benefit of all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whiting said the focus in the new year will be on taking the Flagship City Commons construction vertical. When completed it will offer new office and commercial space downtown. It will also benefit pedestrians with a glass-covered walkway to connect North Park Row and West 5th Street.<\/p>\n
Once all these downtown development projects are complete, EDDC, which is already providing small business operational support, is looking ahead to what\u2019s next. Whiting wants to see the corporation be a facilitator for ensuring Erie\u2019s sustained success. And Whiting believes that\u2019s attracting investment, new businesses and jobs. \u201cEnsuring that what we’re doing yields new job opportunities, brings new businesses into town because they see this as a place where their employees will want to live work play, where they can attract and retain new talent — which is the lifeblood of a lot of major companies which provide those types of jobs,\u201d Whiting added.<\/p>\n
The Commons should be ready for occupancy in 2027.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Erie Downtown Development Corporation set out on an ambitious agenda for 2025. It included bringing in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63200,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[14248,136,33844,138,137,33847,33846,33845],"class_list":{"0":"post-63199","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-erie","8":"tag-economic-growth","9":"tag-erie","10":"tag-erie-downtown-development-corporation","11":"tag-erie-headlines","12":"tag-erie-news","13":"tag-flagship-city-commons","14":"tag-job-opportunities","15":"tag-small-business-support"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63199","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=63199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63199\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}