HONESDALE, PA — If you take a walk down Honesdale’s Main Street, you’ll see a good handful of businesses with a bit of fresh paint about their facades. 

In the past few months, Honesdale has seen roughly seven new businesses come to town, with three or four more on the way, says Greater Honesdale Partnership (GHP) Executive Director Sandi Levens. She says that most of the vacant business properties have been filled, and that every vacancy left has “three or four people calling them and looking at the space.”

“So there’s a big interest coming through Honesdale right now,” she says. 

That interest has been sparked and supported by the GHP, an organization dedicated to the borough’s economic vitality and revitalization. 

The GHP supports its member businesses with a range of programs and initiatives. 

Part of its work involves acquiring grants to help Honesdale businesses improve their operations. It has twice received $50,000 grants to improve Main Street facades; in this grant program, businesses can apply for up to $5,000 in funding to improve any aspect of their building’s street-facing exterior—such as adding awnings, improving signs and installing new doors—with a requirement that they put the same amount of their own money into the project to match. 

Including both grant funding and matching funds, the program has led to $300,000 in investment for Honesdale’s Main Street, says Levens. 

The GHP recently announced the receipt of another grant: $100,000 in state funding for a general business improvement grant program. While subject to the same $5,000 limit and matching requirements as the facade grants, the money can be used for a wider range of business activities, including capital purchases, interior improvements and promotional activites. 

The economic vitality of Honesdale goes hand and hand with the health of its community, says Levens. 

“Everything we’re doing in keeping Honesdale economically viable is for the community as well, because we obviously want more people to move here, to live here, to enjoy the community,” she says. 

Main Street safety

Another part of the GHP’s work—its hand in redesigning Honesdale’s Main Street—is aimed at making the community a safer and more enjoyable place to live.

Pennsylvania’s Route 6 passes right through the center of Honesdale, with one direction running down Main Street and another running parallel up Church Street. 

When Pennsylvania made the decision to make Main Street one way, it made visibility tough for pedestrians as well as for vehicles entering from side streets, said Levens. 

To address this, GHP is working with Woodland Design on a Main Street redesign from 12th Street to 4th Street. 

The redesign puts a high priority on safety, says Levens. “Yes, we want it to look beautiful—we’re going to even out the sidewalks and make it with flowers and plants and things like that—but really, our main focus is safety.” She says the goal is as well to make Honesdale walkable and accessible to people of all ages, recognizing that a lot of older people live in the borough. 

The design for the whole of the project is almost done, says Levens. The GHP currently has $1.3 million in grant funding set aside to construct the one-block portion from 12th Street to 11th Street, and hopes to start the ball rolling there in the spring. The organization is also working on a park along 12th Street that will connect the refurbished portion of Main Street with the Sycamore Point boat launch, completed in the fall of 2024. 

Activities galore

In addition to its work along Honesdale’s Main Street, GHP runs events throughout the year that serve the community and bring customers into town for its businesses. 

GHP pays for Honesdale’s summertime fireworks display, and coordinates wih the Wayne County Creative Arts Council in its summer music series. Later in July, GHP holds sidewalk sales, bringing vendors out into the streets to flog their wares. 

Later in the year, GHP runs the Harvest and Heritage Days event, organizes ghost tours and storytelling at the Old Stone Jail, and hosts a Winter Wonderland event inspired by Honesdale’s connection to the classic Christmas song—the song’s author, Dick Smith, wrote it off his childhood memories of playing in Honesdale’s Central Park. 

Looking big picture, the GHP’s aim is to revitalize Honesdale into a hub of activity for Wayne County. 

During the borough’s heyday in the ‘80s, it was the place to be for shopping and activites, says Levens. “It did take a little bit of a slump and it lost some of that, and now it’s kind of coming back as, like, new, cool, hip.”

“We definitely have the potential to be the hub of Wayne County,” she adds. “So that’s kind of our goal, to make it so that all of Wayne County can come and [so that] when they come for... court or a doctor’s appointment or anything like that, that they can stay around and shop and enjoy Honesdale.”