Her mother sold land for mall, beginning downtown's decline
When I was a child growing up in Frackville in the late 1930s, visits to downtown Pottsville gave me my first taste of the world to be found outside my hometown.
I thought of Pottsville's business district as glamorous and exciting. It had a vigor, an air of hustle and bustle that made Frackville's main street seem sleepy in comparison. On the Saturday mornings my mother told me we would be going to Pottsville, my heart actually beat faster in anticipation.
Ironically, it was a decision my mother made in the 1960s that helped hasten the demise of the downtown Pottsville I had found so fascinating when I was a child.
She chose to sell acreage she owned on Route 61 between Pottsville and Saint Clair to local developers rather than a Harrisburg businessman. The developers used the land to put up Fairlane Village Mall. The Harrisburg applicant had wanted it for a gourmet restaurant, tennis courts and riding trails.
Malls, with their adverse effect on central business districts, would have come to Schuylkill County no matter what my mother's decision.
But the decline of downtown Pottsville may have been slowed if she had made a different choice.
I thought about that often when I wrote about Pottsville's downtown in 1993.
Now things are looking up for downtown. Six new stores opened there recently and an arts and antiques fair attracted thousands of visitors.