Oliver Barnes Parklet in Latrobe is now a cozy space where people can gather, eat or, like Cindy Smithhammer who works nearby, relax before work.The site was previously a gravel lot, left empty by a fire that burned down a bar. TO BEAUTIFUL FOCUS ON WESTMORELAND I N 2013, THERE WERE FEW REGRETS from Latrobe residents when a notorious nuisance bar at the corner of Ligonier and Main streets in the heart of the downtown was destroyed by a fire that officials determined was caused by arson. The dirt-covered lot that lingered for several years afterward served as a constant marker of deterioration in a town struggling to recover from a decades-long recession. “Our vision for downtown was never going to happen with that blighted lot sitting there,” says Jarod Trunzo, executive director of the Latrobe Community Revitalization Program. He describes the end-point of that brighter vision for the community he’s worked in for the past three-and-a-half years: a walkable, safe downtown where shops, restaurants and other businesses are thriving. The journey to make it real began at the front door of The Community Foundation of Westmoreland County, an affiliate of The Pittsburgh Foundation, and Revitalizing Westmoreland, a community grants program devised by the staff and advisory board to assist economically struggling communities in funding projects designed to spur development. Trunzo, recognizing the symbolic as well as the practical advantages of improving Latrobe’s blighted downtown lot, applied to the grants program in 2015, the first year of the program’s pilot. The $25,000 awarded was used to turn the lot into a parklet with grass, a walkway, benches and a table. “Now, you see people of all different ages there when the weather is nice, eating lunch or just walking,” Trunzo says. “And the FROM BLIGHT Revitalizing Westmoreland grants program widens its reach T H E P I T T S B U R G H F O U N D AT I O N 8 F O R U M