Small town, big prize: Bristol wins $500K for downtown makeover

Bristol Borough in Bucks County has won $500,000 in downtown revitalization funds, beating out 14,000 other small towns in all 50 states to claim first prize in Deluxe Corp.'s Small Business Revolution contest.

A crowd started gathering 90 minutes before Wednesday's 2 p.m. live announcement at the Bristol Riverside Theatre on the park-like waterfront, where a $3 million fishing pier and floating day docks are under construction to welcome Delaware River boaters by June.

On the theater screen, Amanda Brinkman, a spokeswoman for the checking-printing and marketing company, was appearing in a video that ended abruptly when she was about to reveal the winner.

"The screen and stage went black," Brinkman said, "and everybody was confused for a second. Then I popped out on stage and the place exploded."

Brinkman said the $500,000 in cash and in-kind services, such as marketing boot camps and tourism promotion, will be split among the town as a whole and six small businesses selected for makeovers.

Brinkman will return to town March 6 to begin three months of filming a series of Bristol revitalization  documentaries that will stream on smallbusinessrevolution.org next fall.

The small town's big win was due in no small part to the tireless Bristol boosterism of Bill Pezza and his nonprofit Raising the Bar get-out-the-vote civic group.

"Like main streets across the country, our Mill Street used to be the commercial hub of Bucks County," Pezza said.

He said winning $500,000 worth of business expertise could put Bristol over the top.

That journey has just begun.

"Before the malls came, before the steel mills shut down, people who were making good middle-class wages were buying everything from refrigerators to bicycles to shoes on Mill Street," he said. "Some people want it to be that main street of 50 years ago again. That won't happen. We didn't die, but we went into a deep sleep. Now, we're rediscovering ourselves.

"We're reawakening."