- New Castle people are, like, really proud.

You know, we're proud of the city, we're proud of the accomplishments.

Look us up, man.

You wouldn't be here for no reason.

You came to New Castle, you know what it's about.

(bright upbeat music) - Welcome to PBS Western Reserve's signature series, "City Centric".

Today, we're here in New Castle, Pennsylvania, the fireworks capital of America.

I'm your host, Sthephanie Marie, and this is "City Centric", the show where we explore our region through the eyes of six passionate individuals who are shaping the fabric of our cities.

Their stories will inspire us with the ways they show up for their communities, making every one of us a little more city-centric.

- How would I describe a person from New Castle?

They gotta like football.

To be honest, I'm not a football fan, but this is a football town.

- Or they can say that, "Those fireworks, those weren't made in New Castle.

I know what New Castle fireworks look like."

- That's a New Castleite.

It’s somebody that truly just loves it and they aren't afraid to express it.

- They're very passionate and they're very diverse.

- People from New Castle really care about their neighbors and about their communities.

- I think you can have it all here.

(upbeat music) - I'm at the Historic Warner Cascade Theater Museum.

Take a trip back in time to visit where the legacy of the Warner Brothers Theaters all began.

This is "City Centric: New Castle."

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (birds chirping) - A friend of mine always said that to learn more about your history is to understand the layers beneath your feet.

And so without understanding the layers beneath your feet, you're unable to really walk a steady ground.

My name's Andrew Henley.

I'm the Library Director here at the New Castle Public Library.

First was introduced to New Castle in 2008 at the age of 13.

I found my way into the Lawrence County Historical Society trying to explore more about my family and its heritage, and while I was there, I truly found my location.

(bright music) When I moved to Washington, D.C., I started to realize that I was missing some things that were happening.

I was missing some of the developments that I was hearing about in New Castle.

I was missing my friends.

I was missing my family.

I was missing a lot of the wonderful things that New Castle truly has to offer.

While I was able to participate remotely, I was still really connected into what was happening.

I think that in order to love a city, you have to leave it, and coming back for me was re-embracing that love.

In the 1790s, John Carlyle Stewart set out New Castle and laid out the town.

He came from New Castle, Delaware, so he just named it after the place he came.

He started to explore and encounter a lot of individuals that wanted to develop this area.

The canal era was what grew the city.

Immigrants, in general, always existed in every community, but disproportionately, they were here.

I say it's like a little New York City because each immigrant population settled in their own respective areas.

Today, we see a lot of communities merging, and a lot of individuals supporting each other in different ways.

I think we all have the same vision in mind, which is a successful vision that the city needs to have.

- The streets of New Castle reveal the city's rich history through preservation, especially in the city's North Hill Historic District.

One of the district's beloved historic buildings even changed the life of our artist.

- Well, I'm Kimberly Koller-Jones.

I'm the Executive Director here at the Hoyt Center for the Arts, and the subsidiary, Arts & Education at the Hoyt.

I've been in this role for 28 years.

When I first saw the job posting, I was 25 years old, so pretty green, taking a long shot, but it was a combination of everything I loved and explored at the time.

They advertised it as this historic house that had arts classes and a sculpture walkway and, you know, full of history, and I was a sculpture major in college, pursuing a master's in historic building preservation.

Well, when I applied for the job, I didn't even know where New Castle was.

(laughs) Not alone Lawrence County, I grew up around Pittsburgh.

The direction I was coming into the city, I have to say it was a little rundown.

But then when I hit the downtown, it was newly developed.

And then of course, as I came through the neighborhood up onto the hill where these houses are located, I was kind of like, "Whoa."

(laughs) So my first impression of the Hoyt, I think I was in awe, you know, of the size of the buildings and seeing them, but they didn't necessarily look the way they do today.

There was water in the basement, the roof was leaking.

It was full of activity, you know?

It still had a sense of purpose and a sense of energy with the classes going on and whatnot.

As an artist, you're always creating something outta nothing, and you take whatever materials are available to you and use those materials to make that something that you see that's not quite there yet.

And that's what I saw when I came to the Hoyt, the raw materials of what it could be.

- The arts and educational services offered by the Hoyt Art Center have had a profound impact on the community.

But outcomes like that don't happen overnight.

There is always so much going on behind the scenes of our cities.

- My name is Chris Frye.

I'm the City Administrator for the city of New Castle.

Was the former mayor in 2020.

Was elected to be mayor in the city of New Castle.

Well, I was the first African American mayor in the city of New Castle in its 200 year history.

Moved to New Castle when I was around 10, 11 years old.

Lived in an area that was highly developed.

Something was new every day.

My mom, single mom, four kids, we moved to New Castle 'cause she was originally from here.

We just, when we got here, it was a blast from the past.

There wasn't a lot of change.

There was still brick roads and a lot of brick buildings, which we weren't used to.

(upbeat music) My mom tells me the story all the time of when we first moved here, I asked her a question about who runs this place.

Not knowing that, you know, there was a mayor or city council or there was an administration that had the authority to bring change.

And she told me that it was a mayor.

This was 10, 11 years old.

And fast forward to today, or I'll say when I was 28 years old, I made the choice to, you know, run for office.

And I'm here today serving in that capacity and enjoying every, you know, every bit of it.

I get to provide quality services all throughout the community.

And that's what my hope was, I would say, when I was, you know, 10, 11 years old, wanted to be a part of that change.

So, it's been an exciting time here, and like I said, New Castle became home for us.

In 2020, when I became mayor, there was also a push to bring, and a recommendation from the state, actually, to change our form of government.

It was on the ballot, to change our form of government from a mayor council form of government to a home rule charter form of government.

And what that means is, you know, my position as mayor transitioned into a professionalized city manager, city administration.

So I was able to get the first year, be the first city administrator, also, the first Black mayor and the first city administrator of New Castle, which are all great accomplishments and I think is a testament to the trust that has built throughout the community and with council.

(upbeat music) - Our next guest, business leader, Don Kemerer, is dedicated to making life better for kids in New Castle through his work at Cray Youth and Family Services.

Cray helps children in need and provides employment opportunities through the Confluence Cafe.

- My name is Don Kemerer.

I'm the CEO and Executive Director of Cray Youth and Family Services, which is a social service agency.

This is our Confluence, which is our social enterprise and our gift to the community.

I have lived my entire adult life in New Castle.

I have worked for Cray for 34 years.

I've been very involved in the community and trying to make this city and this area and our county a better place.

At 34 years, you know, working with kids, I have kids of kids, you know?

I've been working with kids that I have that are now in their 40s.

And we also have a motto that once a Cray kid, always a Cray kid.

Well, the mission for Cray is to make life better for kids.

And in many ways, we've made life better for a lot of kids, but there's still a lot of kids that need help.

We want a safe, healthy place for them to be.

They can come here on Thursday nights, listen to music very safely.

You don't have to worry about drugs, alcohol, those kinds of things that can get in the way, and it's a safe harbor.

I think it's important for local businesses to exist so that we can be a thriving community.

I think the more businesses we get down here, the more people that'll come down.

I'm not a native of New Castle, but once I moved here as an adult, something about the place drew me, and after college, I stayed here, and I have been here ever since.

When I was drawn here, there was a lot more in New Castle, too.

My thought is, we just gotta work harder, 'cause there's gotta be some way that we can make this a better place.

- Every city needs a safe harbor.

That's a belief that Don and our visionary, Nicole Amabile, share.

Her work at the nonprofit, Arise, serves people affected by domestic violence and provides the community a safe space in times of need.

- So, my name is Nicole Amabile, and I'm the Executive Director at Arise Lawrence County.

We're a victim service advocacy organization.

Our mission at Arise is to advocate for victims of crime and to educate and empower the citizens in our community to break the cycle of violence.

(gentle music) Born and raised in New Castle, and growing up, I was actually, like, really disconnected from the city.

So, New Castle is a very rural place which some might know, so I sort of lived on the outskirts of the city and spent a lot of time in Ohio.

So I really got more connected with the city as I got into the work that I am doing and got more familiar with all of the services and other organizations that are around the city.

I always knew growing up that I was gonna be a helper.

I've been very connected to people and just, I have a lot of empathy for people.

And before I even knew the word, I knew that people deserved to live with dignity and to have a sense of self worthiness, and so I knew that I was gonna grow up and go into the helping field.

So, I chose to do the work that I do in New Castle because I just love the community.

There are so many helpers in New Castle.

And for being a small rural community, it's unbelievable the amount of support and programs that exist for the residents, and I love that.

I think having that supportive network of services in place is exactly what residents of any city need, and I just wanna be a part of that.

- No matter the circumstance, the people of New Castle have persevered together to create opportunities for their community to thrive.

Our humanitarian, Damon Blackshear, is committed to making New Castle a better city by making sure no one has to go hungry in the place that they call home.

- My name is Damon Blackshear.

I'm the Director of Food Services here at the City Rescue Mission in New Castle, Pennsylvania.

At about the age of six years old, we moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, and we were probably only there for about, maybe about nine months before we moved to Houston, Texas.

To 1986, when my mother got the news that my grandfather was passing away, so we moved back up this way, and we actually ended up moving to New Castle, Pennsylvania, in 1986, where I've been since then.

You know, I went to school here in New Castle and everything.

Around 1997, my mother passed away, and I went into about a two year kind of like depression, where I didn't really wanna do nothing.

But I can remember growing up as a kid and coming home from school and knowing that I had a certain sweatshirt or a pair of shoes or something at my house, and I would go down to the park and I would see another little kid with those shoes on, thinking to myself, "Those look just like mine."

So I would go home and I say, "Hey, Mom, what happened to my hoodie," or, "What happened to my shoes?"

And she would say, "Well, those kids didn't have it, and so I'll get you some more stuff, but we gotta give this to them."

And from being around that, it kind of just instilled in me to always just wanna help.

Even when it's something you don't wanna give away, sometimes it's necessary to do that, to see somebody else benefit from it.

I couldn't really pick a favorite thing about the job because there's days where I'm off that I come down here.

And so it's not about the money because I'm down here when I'm not getting paid, you know what I mean?

And I'm down here because I like being down here.

You meet a lot of different walks of life of people down here, you know what I mean?

It's exciting to see people get their life back.

And that's what's really important to me.

(gentle music) (uplifting music) Our town could need a little help.

Like, you rode down the streets, you could see we need some road work and different little things like that, jobs to come back around, and things of that nature.

- When I ran for mayor, we were in Act 47, which is the economic distress status, for 15, 16 years.

I knew that going in.

The state required us to get out in three years.

We had a lot of initiatives and priorities that we had to meet to achieve financial stability.

I'm happy to say that today, you know, we're out of that, that designation.

That kind of left the black cloud over us, too, you know, when it came to development and revitalization efforts.

You know, nobody wants to go somewhere that's economically distressed.

But that also provided a lot of resources for us to help us climb out of that situation.

- When I look at the city of New Castle, what I see coming back to me is a lot of love, because there's not one place in this city, like I said, where you can't find help.

- A misconception of the city is that it's just not worth saving, it's not worth all of the effort that community leaders are putting in to revitalize the city to make sure that we're bringing programs and new business and money into the city, and I just don't believe that that's true at all.

Because the people here are special.

They're just great.

They care so much about the community in the city, and I think that's exactly the type of city that's worth the effort to make sure that it continues to flourish.

(uplifting music continues) - I think that the biggest misconception people have about New Castle is the crime and the safety.

Like, they think that this is a dangerous community to live in, or, you know, the downtown is dangerous to walk in at night.

I'm gonna tell you 'cause I've done it, it's just not.

- I was looking at crime rates when I was at the Historical Society, 'cause we did a whole exhibit on crime.

I will say that crime has decreased over 40%, but the news doesn't say that.

I mean, since 2008 and since we have a new DA, I mean, in that timeframe, we've seen crime decrease.

- We have some wonderful things that are happening now, you know, coming out of Act 47 post COVID, post all the social justice issues that was happening across the community.

You know, we used a lot of those opportunities to just showcase, you know, our ability to band together and work through those hard times.

Some great things that are happening now.

You see there's demolitions happening of commercial buildings.

That hadn't happened in a very long time.

With plans after the fact, plans of green spaces of welcoming opportunities for people to come and congregate and eat meals and walk and live downtown.

We have a lot of new businesses that have opened up in town.

There's been a huge push to create an ecosystem for entrepreneurs in our community.

and we have wonderful organizations that are leading that push.

From a city standpoint, we have to be supportive, we have to be supportive of all those initiatives.

- It's just amazing for the small area that it is that we have the diversity of all cultures coming together.

And that ethnicity is, to me, pretty cool that we can all get along and, you know, attempt to make this a better place.

But I think that is what makes it great.

It's also an affordable place to raise a family, and it's a safe place.

You know, New Castle's got a bad rep, no question about it.

You know, there has been a lot of problems over the years, but I have a lot of faith in the future.

It's not about me, it's not about the Confluence itself, it's about creating, using the Confluence to be a ripple effect to make this community a better place.

(water trickling) - New Castle is a hardworking city along the Shenango River, with a celebrated cultural heritage.

New Castle pride means coming together over a homemade Sunday sauce or a world class firework show.

(bright upbeat music) (bright upbeat music continues) When the people of New Castle come together, you can count on the results being nothing short of something great.

- And so where I see our next steps truly to be, the library itself has gone through some struggles with the respect to a building that, you know, needs a little love.

And so we've kicked off our capital campaign, where we've been able to raise over $500,000 in six months, and now we're working through the final stages of what this capital campaign can truly do.

Our numbers have soared for circulation, for checking out books, for participating in programs, for impact that we measure here at the library, moreso than they ever have.

(bright upbeat music continues) - I think what makes the city great is that the people who live in the city are very innovative, and they're not afraid of evolution and really work hard together to take care of the citizens and make sure the city has what it needs to flourish.

- I feel like I'm city centric because I'm red and black through and through, I'm New Castle Red Hurricane.

There's nothing more New Castle than a New Castle Red Hurricane.

And then when you look into this and you say, "Damon Blackshear," you go up to the New Castle field house and you look up number 77, I'm House, everybody knows me as House.

So, I'm red and black through and through.

I am city centric.

- I'm New Castle centric because I truly love the three things that New Castle has to offer.

Its architecture, its people, and the waterways and natural resources that we have within the community.

- I'm New Castle centric because, again, I'm not originally from here.

I've had multiple opportunities to leave and live somewhere else, but I've never, ever felt the same feeling of home anywhere else.

New Castle just provides that comfort, that love.

- Well, I'm a city centric person, I'm a New Castle person, because I'm in it for the long haul and have been.

Nothing's gonna get in my way.

I don't care what happens, I'm going to persevere, and I'm going to do whatever it takes to help this town.

And I have a lot of faith in, like I said, where we're at right now.

I do believe that there are things around the corner here that are gonna really make some changes for the good of our city.

- I think the city of New Castle has influenced me through the experiences that I've had with the people.

From the children in the afterschool program to the partners that we've been working with within the city and the county government towards revitalization efforts, to just understanding the challenges that organizations and people have faced, and kind of figuring out, okay, what part can I play, or what part can my organization play in becoming a part of that solution?

- So the biggest lesson that I learned from the city of New Castle is to not judge a book by its cover, because if you listen sometimes to all of the external noise, you fail to see what's on the inside.

And I think that our city has had a bad rap for various reasons, you know, throughout the decades.

But when you really get to know the city and you really get to know the people, you learn that that's just noise and not the truth.

- I think our future is in great hands, 'cause our youth, or the city of New Castle's youth, are gonna carry us well far into the future.

- We're opening up a pocket park downtown.

We just did a million dollar job, construction job, doing bike lanes phase one of our river walk trail plan.

It's gonna include a dog park, you know, a water filling station.

We're clustering and focusing our efforts block by block downtown.

And that's somewhere to start, you know?

Phase two, phase three of these projects, you're gonna see another building downtown be revitalized into a open air market, where folks can come, vendors will be set up, restaurants.

We'll give that central location, you know?

We wanna provide more opportunities for more food trucks, more vendors, more space for people to recreate and enjoy downtown.

Just bring that foot traffic back.

We wanna bring the foot traffic back to downtown, and we're doing that, again, block by block, business by business.

And those are some of the exciting things that are coming down the pike.

That's, you know, it's a bright future for us.

(bright upbeat music) ♪ Ooh ♪ Ooh ♪ Ooh ♪ A-whoa-oh, a-whoa-oh - New Castle is a city on the rise, with true leaders in its corner.

The people of New Castle have shown us that with enough grit, dedication, and love for your community, there is no challenge you can't overcome as long as you work together.

What steps can you take to be city-centric?

When you find a way to inspire, innovate, and energize within your community, you invest in a future that is better for all of us.

Are you city-centric?

- My name is Damon Blackshear.

- My name is Chris Frye.

- My name is Nicole Amabile.

- My name is Kimberly Kohler Jones.

- My name is Don Kemerer.

- My name's Andrew Henley, and I am New Castle centric.

- And I'm New Castle centric.

- And I am New Castle centric.

- And I am New Castle centric.

- And I'm New Castle centric.

- And I'm New Castle centric.

(upbeat music) - [Interviewer] Your best...

Favorite burger in New Castle?

- That ain't a fair question, because I feel like I make the best burger in New Castle, so.

- I'm a hand talker, is that okay?

Like, I'm trying to figure out, like, what to do with my hands, okay?

(laughs) Because they'll be, like, flying if I let them.

(laughs) - [Interviewer] Let 'em fly.

All right, so, you good?

- Yeah, I'm good, let's get it.