Jeff Siegler came to Peoria on Monday with the same message he’s brought to nearly a dozen other towns across the country: if you want to revitalize your community, citizens need to care.
Fighting apathy is more important than obtaining government grants, Siegler told a crowd of some 20 people at the Gateway Building on the Peoria riverfront.
As the founder of Revitalize or Die, the 43-year-old Siegler kicked off a week-long series of programs to spur community pride organized by the Peoria Innovation Alliance, the Peoria Area Convention & Visitors Bureau and Big Picture Peoria.
Siegler, who now lives with his family in Pittsburgh, showed slides of his hometown of Lima, Ohio, a town of 37,000. The speaker pointed out how a once-proud downtown with attractive buildings and locally-owned businesses had been replaced by a sprawling stretch of chain stores.
Mark Misselhorn, chairman of the Downtown Advisory Commission, pointed out how closely the downtown shots of Lima from the early 20th century resembled Peoria during the same period.
Siegler challenged his Peoria audience to take ownership of the state of their city.
“Our places shape us. They should make us proud. If they don’t, we must reshape our places,” he said.
Residents have to take on the job of reshaping their community, said Siegler. “It can’t be fixed from the outside. Pride requires participation,” he said.
“When we embraced sprawl, we threw out generations of craftsmanship, pride and ingenuity and turned our backs on the buildings our ancestors built,” said Siegler, calling decisions that led to the deterioration of downtowns across the United States “70 years of bad policy.”
Revitalized communities are those that develop an identity, establish standards and whose citizens develop a sense of ownership, he said.
More information on civic-pride programs planned this week can be found at www.peoriaonpurpose.com/309week.
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