2024 Townie Award Winners

HARRISBURG, PA. – Pennsylvania Downtown Center (PDC) presented twenty awards during the organization’s annual statewide Townie Awards gala. The Townie Awards are a festive and venerable tradition designed to recognize the commonwealth’s core communities and individuals for creating and implementing projects, programs, and events that exemplify the goals of PDC’s community revitalization mission. Eligible communities consist of Pennsylvania Downtown Center’s nearly 200 member organizations, including Main Street and Elm Street programs, making the Townies a competitive award process each year.

Pennsylvania Downtown Center’s executive director, Julie Fitzpatrick, said “The Townies are an opportunity for us to showcase our member communities and celebrate their incredible work in our commonwealth’s business districts and neighborhoods. Our Main Street and Elm Street community leaders work tirelessly to make our Pennsylvania communities places where we are proud to call home, start a business, build a family, or retire. We’re thrilled to honor 20 incredible award winners.”

The Townie Awards are part of PDC’s annual statewide conference, held in a different commonwealth community each year to highlight the respective city or town’s accomplishments in community and neighborhood revitalization. This year’s conference, The Crossroads of Community & Collaboration: Building Dynamic and Innovative Partnerships, held in downtown York, was attended by close to 300 individuals and included borough and municipal officials, experts in community planning and landscape architecture, and dozens of Main Street and Elm Street managers. Attendees enjoyed a variety of classroom and mobile sessions, an evening exploring the Royal Square District, a ball game at the York Revolution WellSpan Park and keynote presentations from Shaylyn Romney Garret, author of “The Upswing”, Anna Zivarts, author of “When Driving is Not an Option” and Jess King, ED of The Steinman Institute for Civic Engagement.