“Located in the heart of the Rust Belt, New Castle, Pa., has been struggling ever since the decline of the steel industry. Losing its industry brought hard times as people lost jobs and, eventually, businesses closed. Population began to drop in the 1960s and continues to decline — New Castle, after all these years, remains a shell of a city just waiting to be reborn.”
By 2007, New Castle was near the brink of financial collapse. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania entered the town into Act 47, a special designation for distressed towns.
Through two projects (one in 2021 and one in 2022), Wesbanco used NMTC financing to bring some life back to New Castle’s commercial center.
Their second project, in 2022, involved the revitalization of the corridor buildings leading into downtown. These buildings were located immediately outside of downtown New Castle and form the gateway into the downtown. The buildings had fallen into a state of decay over the years, but thanks to NMTC financing, a borrower resolved to restore the corridor.
This project assisted in preventing more buildings from going dark and helping New Castle continue its other revitalization efforts that are beginning to draw private investment into the area. The borrower is already seeing private businesses ranging from professional service providers to restaurants investing in the area, catalyzed by their revitalization efforts already underway.
In 2023, New Castle was taken off of Act 47 Status, signifying that the municipality had stabilized its finances. A key part of stabilizing their finances restoring the downtown corridor and bringing vacant and underutilized structures back on the tax rolls- something that Wesbanco helped accomplish with their two NMTC investments.