About the Tri-County Performing Arts Center Project (TriPAC)

Why Pottstown?

Pottstown's Promise

Pottstown is uniquely ripe for the creation of a vibrant downtown serving the Tri-County Region. With its fine architecture and wide avenues, one can envision downtown Historic Pottstown as a thriving business community filled with boutiques and specialty shops, restaurants, office space, and arts venues.

Already, Pottstown is in the throes of a major transformation, witnessed by the expansive development of the downtown area. Pottstown is ideally situated with easy access to major thoroughfares. Most significantly, however, is that Pottstown is centrally located within the major development and population growth of the Western Philadelphia suburbs, an area currently underserved by the arts.

Another reason is the many activities that happen in and around Pottstown. To see all of the activities, click here.

The Needs of our Communities

Over the past 20 years, Pottstown has suffered the loss of its industrial base and is now designated as one of Pennsylvania’s Keystone Opportunity Zones, an area with high poverty and unemployment rates. Many individuals and families in the Tri-County Region have limited or no access to performing arts opportunities, either due to travel and time constraints, or lack of financial resources. For some area residents, it is a matter of means; for others, a matter of practicality and convenience.

Community interest in a performing arts center is very high. In 2002, the Pottstown Metropolitan Regional Planning Commission undertook a study of the 150,000 residents in 8 municipalities surrounding Pottstown to assess services and perceived needs. Fifty-eight percent (58%) of respondents replied that their municipality is not adequately served by public recreation, defined to include a Cultural Arts Center. The Commission recommendations include: “[e]stablish[ing] a regional performing arts center in downtown Pottstown.” (Emphasis added.)

Village Productions’ Feasibility Study and informal focus group meetings bear out this finding. In Summer 2005, Village Productions engaged an independent consultant to conduct a Feasibility Study to determine whether there was sufficient financial support for, and interest in, the Tri-County Performing Arts Center Project. A resounding 93% of the study participants responded favorably toward a Performing Arts Center, with responses equally consistent among individuals living or working in the Borough of Pottstown and respondents living or working in the surrounding communities. Moreover, during informal surveys and focus group meetings during 2004 and 2005, residents and performing artists in the area cited the lack of space in the Tri-County Region in which to hold intimate performances, and voiced strong support for the TriPAC Project.

Capital Campaign