Celebrating our Partners: PA Wilds Planning Team, Municipalities, Elected Officials
- by Tataboline Enos
- June 29, 2022
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Today’s Great Outdoors Month gratitude post goes to the PA Wilds Planning Team and the many county and municipal partners and elected officials who are helping us grow the outdoor rec economy in the PA Wilds to revitalize rural communities.
The PA Wilds Planning Team is one of the largest and longest-standing governance structures around the PA Wilds effort. It was formed in 2006 through a groundbreaking Intergovernmental Cooperation Agreement (ICA), the largest geographically of its kind in Pennsylvania.
The ICA brings together the region’s county governments, typically through representation of the county planner, the region’s four Economic Development Districts, two Heritage Areas, visitor bureaus, PA Wilds Center, conservation partners and others to work on regional planning issues related to outdoor recreation development.
Led by a push by Jerry Walls, a Lycoming County Planning Director at the time, the Planning Team grew organically, from the ground up, in response to the heavy focus on marketing in the early years of the PA Wilds effort. The Team argued for a more holistic approach to outdoor rec development in the region, and supporting communities to achieve a state of readiness to receive visitors.
This approach was embraced by state partners and laid the foundation for the holistic approach still taken today, with side by side investments in recreation infrastructure, small business development, regional planning and capacity building, marketing and branding, and conservation and stewardship.
The Planning Team spearheaded the development of the PA Wilds Design Guide for Community Character Stewardship and the many related signage and façade grant programs that have followed behind it.
The Team also elevated early on the idea that there needed to be a strong focus on supporting local entrepreneurs, which led to the creation of the ombudsman and later, the PA Wilds Center for Entrepreneurship, the locally led nonprofit that now leads the regional strategy in coordination with state partners and houses all of the PA Wilds programs and services for communities.
The Planning Team would not exist if not for the support of the region’s county commissioners. Every county commissioner in the region in 2004 signed the ICA, and successive commissioners have recommitted to the work each year through their planner’s contributions to the PA Wilds Planning Team.
Local municipalities have stepped up to lead a number of recreation projects across the region over the years that have helped to grow the region’s outdoor rec economy. Under BBBRC we’d advance three more – by Tioga County, Jenks Township, and City of Warren – and put frameworks in place to help advance others in the decades ahead.
Throughout its evolution, the PA Wilds work has benefitted from strong bi-partisan support, from state governors to our federal delegation to our state legislators to our county commissioners, local mayors and township supervisors. Dozens of these elected officials have gotten behind outdoor recreation projects over the years, and many more wrote support letters or contributed to sign-on letters for our region’s Build Back Better Regional Challenge application.
Public, private and philanthropic investors almost always want to see that local communities have skin in the game before they will invest, and involvement by local municipalities and elected officials in the PA Wilds effort is one important way that we are able demonstrate that.
We thank these partners for their sustained commitment to this important work for rural PA!
About the Series:
To celebrate June being Great Outdoors Month, we are highlighting partners throughout June who are helping grow the outdoor recreation economy here in the PA Wilds to help revitalize rural communities. Our 13-county region is the only outdoor rec industry cluster to make it to the final round of the national Build Back Better Regional Challenge competition, where we are now competing for $50M in federal investment from the US Economic Development Administration. We couldn’t have made it this far without our incredible partners!
Learn more about the PA Wilds and the BBBRC competition here.
