Serving and Supporting the Local Community with Pauline Garcia-Allen

Liam Dempsey: We are teaming up with the Southern Chester County Chamber of Commerce to host another networking event. Come connect and mingle with your Start Local community on Thursday, April 17 from 5-7 PM. We’ll be in Kennett Square at the Creamery. 

The Creamery is rated as one of the best beer gardens in the Philadelphia region according to Main Line Today. Join us for an evening of great conversation, food, and drink. As always, attendance is free, but registration is required. Head over to our website at [startlocal.co] to learn more and to RSVP. 

Welcome to Start Local, where we talk with business owners, leaders of nonprofits, and other members of our community focused on doing business in and around Chester County, Pennsylvania. Each episode will provide insight into the local business scene and tell you about opportunities to connect with and support businesses and nonprofits in your local area.

Joe Casabona: The Southern Chester County Chamber of Commerce promotes trade, commerce, industry, and sustainable economic development while supporting a diverse and growing marketplace. The chamber is proud to partner with the Start Local podcast to raise the profile of businesses and nonprofits throughout Chester County. Learn more about the chamber at scccc.com. That’s scccc.com.

Liam Dempsey: Hey. Hey. I’m Liam Dempsey, and I am here again today in the podcast studio with Erik Guddmandson. Erik, how are you?

Erik Gudmundson: I am doing very well, Liam. How are you today?

Liam Dempsey: I am fantastic. Thank you. I am super excited to tell our guests about our upcoming in person networking event. We are really excited to be heading to Kennett Square. More specifically, we’re gonna head down to the Creamery, which is just this amazing old, repurposed venue that, it’s just a great mix of old and cool and new and fun and hip.

Erik Gudmundson: And for those that don’t know, the Creamery, I think they do have ice cream on their menu, but it’s more of a beer garden than an ice cream parlor. So some people are a little disappointed in that. Some people are happy about that, but that is an awareness that everyone should have.

Liam Dempsey: Dan, that’s great. And I should also share that we are doing this very specifically in collaboration with the Southern Chester County Chamber of Commerce. We’re super grateful to have them involved with this particular event. So, folks, head on over to our website, to learn more information about how you can register to attend. 

Getting to today, I wanna welcome Pauline Garcia-Allen. She’s the Borough Manager of the borough of Oxford, and that’s Oxford, Pennsylvania, folks. Hello, Pauline. 

Pauline Garcia-Allen: Hello.

Liam Dempsey: Pauline, it’s very nice to see you in the podcast studio today. Welcome.

Pauline Garcia-Allen: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity.

Liam Dempsey: Pauline, we’re so grateful that you’re here. Thank you. Thank you.

Your job title is Borough Manager for the Borough of Oxford, Pennsylvania. That means you’re a government employee rather than an elected official, just to be really clear about that. So from that, I have two questions for you. Briefly, what are your duties and responsibilities as a Borough Manager? And secondly, who appointed you to that role? How did you get hired?

Pauline Garcia-Allen: I’m the Chief Executive Officer for the municipality. It is an appointed position, not an elective position. I’m appointed by a governing body, a borough council, which is seven elected officials, and they reflect the will of the voters. So they are my boss, and they have assigned me with overseeing daily operations, as well as long term planning for the municipality. So I oversee the public works department, administration, codes, and officials. 

There is, an elected official, the mayor, who is direct oversight for the police department and the police chief, but we work very closely and their budget is a part of our budget and we’re collaborating consistently together.

Erik Gudmundson: Pauline, I lived in Lannonburg for many years, which is not too far from Oxford. And so I was, really enjoying Oxford First Fridays, and it seemed like the town was really coming back in a vibrant kind of way. Then we had this pandemic lockdown thing. And then there was a terrible fire in the borough back in September of 2023. So those are those are two big hits for for any downtown area. We know that the community of Oxford pulled together to support those most immediately impacted by the fire. But now that we’re eighteen months from that fire and the pandemic lockdowns are over, how is the recovery coming for County Oxford?

Pauline Garcia-Allen: I think we’re at a really exciting point. It’s hard. Right? I mean, there’s a lot of anticipation about what happens to those sites. It’s right in the center of town, and people don’t often recognize or realize how hard it is to redevelop properties and what has to happen before you actually put shovels in the ground. 

But there’s two kind of elements to that fire that we’re tracking and and trying to support. One is what happened to the families who lost their homes. There are about 25 apartments in the historic buildings there. And, we had social service organizations and community members who came together to help, those families find new homes. We’re still trying to track what happens to them because housing affordability and availability and keeping them in the community is a consistent challenge. 

And then there’s what happens to the actual fire parcels themselves. Right? So it was five parcels, and ultimately where things are headed is in a really exciting direction where those five will become two. One will be the rebuilding of the theater, that as part of what was supposed to happen was the redevelopment of the historic theater, bringing a theater back to this part of the county. Now, the grant funding and things that were secured for that are just gonna rebuild the theater in a new dynamic and engaging way white with a marquee on Main Street. 

The other part of it is a private development that will be a mixed-use development with canoe commercial amenities on the First Floor and bringing back that residential, apartments and housing stock that we need. So it’s exciting because I think all of the right people are at the table working together. It just takes a long time, but things are heading in the right direction. And I think folks in the community and in the larger area are gonna start to see things, sooner than later.

Erik Gudmundson: When you mentioned you have the right people at the table, do you collaborate with other municipalities in Chester County? I’m thinking of maybe, like, a Spring City on the opposite corner of Chester County or even Phoenixville, which did a pretty successful, you know, redevelopment and rebirth. Have you talked with others, how would, how do you how do you talk with other municipalities?

Pauline Garcia-Allen: I am always trying to collaborate with other municipalities in part because, you know, we’re trying to revitalize and prepare for the growth that’s coming down the Route 1 corridor, but we’re not reinventing the wheel or doing anything that those that’s came before us haven’t done in other areas. And Phoenixville is a great example of that. What’s happening to Kennett and in and in Westchester? So, you know, there’s a what we call a managers consortium, which is a group of municipal managers across Chester County that have this constant communication going that get together once a month, and it’s, you know, it’s always like, hey. How are you addressing this problem? What did you do about this? You know, what was your community like ten years ago, and how did you get from A to Z? It’s, I I would not have been able to navigate my early time with the borough without those resources and that support.

Liam Dempsey: I was just in the borough on Sunday, I think it was. It was a wonderfully sunny Sunday, and it was down at the Sawmill Chester with the family, and we went for it was such a nice day outside. It’s let’s go down to Oxford. And it’s such a cute little town. And I wonder if you can paint a picture for us about the town and who lives there. What does it look like? What sort of trade business trade there? Who calls Oxford home for folks who aren’t familiar?

Pauline Garcia-Allen: So the borough itself is what we call or the county likes to call the urban center, right, of the six municipalities that ultimately make up this little corner of the Commonwealth. Surrounding us are townships that have historically been much more agricultural. That’s starting to change with the growth coming down the Route 1 Corridor. But if you look at how things are laid out, we are really kind of the center of the wheel with the, you know, major roadways kind of coming out as spokes into the townships in the larger region.

We are far more diverse than I think people realize. Right over the Mason Dixon line, we have a sizable African American population. We have an agricultural heritage both in and outside the borough, a sizable Amish county. And then of course with the mushroom industry that is not just in Kennett, but all the way down here as well, we have a sizable Latino community. It’s very diverse, both economically and in all the ways that we think of that.

Industry-wise, we are, you know, what you would think of as a small town main street, right? We’re right within the borough. We are working to revitalize the downtown to bring in more amenities, restaurants, entertainment opportunities, the things that kinda support daily life. But we do have other industries. And right outside the borough, you see a lot of a mix of larger commercial and industrial uses like hers, a look to our south, or, other industries, Nutell, New Chatel, and things like that. So iit’s a nice mix.

Erik Gudmundson: Back in October of 2023, we heard from Eric Hune that Oxford was, in his opinion, a place to keep an eye on as an up-and-coming gem. Eric Hune is the General Manager of Pillar Real Estate Advisors. They’re a commercial real estate firm serving the width and breadth of the county. What do you think makes Oxford such a great place?

Pauline Garcia-Allen: Location, location, location in part. Right? So part of what made Oxford really thriving in the early days of its incorporation was the fact that we are halfway between Philadelphia and Baltimore, from the North and the South. We’re halfway between Lancaster and Wilmington, east to West. 

And we’re also not that long of a drive from both New York and Washington, DC. Right? But from here in this little area, you have you know, a really nice, still kind of rural quality of life. And in the borough, you have this small town, walkable, historic charm. And I think that especially as folks who wanna live in Chester County or wanna live in the Commonwealth but are getting priced out of other areas, we’re becoming an increasingly, enticing place to move to.

Liam Dempsey: Before we had you on, I was doing some homework and reading up on the borough of Oxford, and I was really intrigued to learn that Oxford can trace its confectionery and candy business history all the way back to, apparently, the mid-eighteen hundreds.

Pauline Garcia-Allen: Mhmm.

Liam Dempsey: And, yeah, I certainly know about the Swiss chocolatier in Oxford, New Chatel. I’m a big fan. We were just there within the last week or so. But I wonder if you can shed any light on Oxford history and chocolate. What is it all about?

Pauline Garcia-Allen: It all stems back to that location again, right, and where we were located when it in, you know, early American history and the early eighteen hundreds. I think our location put us in a unique situation for commerce and what really, kind of advanced that was the railroad that came through the borough in the 1850’s.

And then from the 1860’s to the 1920s, 1930’s, there were like 20 to 30 trains a day that came through the borough. And I’ve heard that that included five tons a week of chocolate and caramel. And, you know, and it really was a really thriving place that changed with the construction of I 95 and then the loss of rail through here, especially passenger rail. But during that heyday, you know, chocolate and candy was a big part of of early Oxford history.

Erik Gudmundson: Sticking with that theme of history, let’s talk about your neighbors. Lincoln University is just up the road from Oxford on Baltimore Pike, and it’s the second oldest historically black college university in the state. Lincoln University is the first HBCU to offer an accredited degree. What’s it like having such a historically significant institution of higher learning as a neighbor?

Pauline Garcia-Allen: Our findings are kinda tied to each other, actually. So, you know, the borough’s early incorporation in the early 1900’s was really influenced a lot by Reverend John Dickey and his wife Sarah. They owned a lot of land in this area, and they actually founded the Ashman Institute, which is what became Lincoln University. So from what I’ve learned they were pretty, pivotal in having the railroad route through this area, the founding of the university, and kind of, you know, how this area evolved.

We are actively working, with Lincoln and our partners like the Oxford Main Street Organization and the Chamber to build ties and to kind of hearken back to that really early history. We want to take advantage of what it means to have a university close to town. We want students in town, we want their merch in town, and we want to find ways to collaborate.

Liam Dempsey: Let’s turn to you and your leadership role, Pauline. When you started your role in 2021, you shared in an article that, and I quote you here, and I hope I quote you correctly. “I want to help facilitate dialogue among Oxford’s diverse groups and help bring consensus and solve problems. Oxford is at an important point in its revitalization”, and that’s the end of the quote. How’s that all going?

Pauline Garcia-Allen: It’s going well. It’s going really well, actually, which sometimes it’s hard to see on the ground, especially when you have this big, you know, pit wherein in a fence where there used to be buildings. It’s no doubt that the fire was a setback, but there are so many things happening behind the scenes, that I fundamentally do believe things are about ready to pop. 

And I always say now is the time to invest in Oxford. What we have here, I think, is, is two components. There’s what the municipality is doing, what I’ve been keenly focused on to try to prepare for both the challenges and the opportunity that the growth coming down the route one quarter offers us. Right? And what do we as municipalities do to, be a good partner when it comes to downtown revitalization and investment by updating our ordinances, making sure that we’re removing the barriers to investing in the borough. 

But then there’s also what the private property owners and are doing on the ground and the business owners, and they were really the drivers of the revitalization of Oxford in the early 2000’s, by really sticking with it. 

A lot of local people who were just very committed to investing in Oxford and running businesses. You mentioned the sawmill. The family who owns the sawmill has invested in a few properties here and really stuck with it and found the right niche when, you know, we’re an emerging market. It wasn’t necessarily that you were gonna get a return on that investment, but they loved the community, and they were a driver in trying to advance that. And now the municipality is saying, okay. What’s our role, and how do we help?

Erik Gudmundson: You personally have a degree in journalism and media studies. You have worked for the Anti-Defamation League. You have professional experience in development, grant management, and communications. I suspect that all plays a strong role in your role there redeveloping Oxford. How would you say that background influences your current role as the Borough Manager specifically?

Pauline Garcia-Allen: I feel like my career’s kind of zigzagged in many different ways, but I feel like the through line is community development and economic development. I spend the early part of my career more on the community development side, working on issues around human relations and conflict resolution. 

And then I went to the economic development side of things, working with municipalities and private developers on how you take underutilized properties or brownfields and repurpose them and make them productive back for the community again. And now I feel like that and working with all those different types of constituencies has, I hope, you know, put me in a unique position to help Oxford through this next phase of its transition.

Erik Gudmundson: I would dare say you’re that makes you uniquely qualified to help Oxford with that transition.

Pauline Garcia-Allen: I hope so.

Liam Dempsey: You were recently elected to the board of directors of the Southern Chester County Chamber of Commerce.

Pauline Garcia-Allen: Mhmm.

Liam Dempsey: Can you share why the borough belongs to the Chamber of Commerce? And another question along similar lines is in in that new leadership role with the chamber, what value are you hoping to add to the chamber? And on behalf of the borough, what value are you hoping to achieve for it?

Pauline Garcia-Allen: So municipalities, we have a vested interest in what happens in the business community and the local economy. Right? Like, we need them to be successful to survive for ourselves and for the sustainability of municipal services. And we also wanna make sure our residents have the amenities and the services they need to support their daily life. So it is critical that we support our chambers, that we’re constantly having a dialogue with our chambers. 

My specific involvement with the Southern Chester County Chamber is so valuable to me because it helps me get a regional perspective. You know, I toil away day to day with my colleagues here and our partners here in the borough, and it’s very easy to get insular and not see what’s happening in the larger region in Southern Chester County and in the county as a whole. So it keeps me connected. It helps me see things from a different perspective.

And my hope is that, I can help, you know, kind of provide what the pressures are and what the concerns are for municipal leaders as we’re supporting business and industry and the local economy. I need to understand what, you know, business leaders are facing and what their challenges are, what makes it hard to invest in a local community, and likewise, we’ll have a more productive conversation if they kind of understand, well, here’s what municipalities just can and can’t do or what we’re considering as we’re trying to support you.

Erik Gudmundson: I think it makes a lot of sense for you to stay as plugged in as you are to other municipalities and businesses, you know, in your area, simply to keep Oxford well integrated with the rest of the county because Oxford is an important part of the county, and the county is itself is is very important too.

I wanna ask though about the actual residents of the borough, the people that live there every day and they pay taxes in the borough. I’m sure they have complaints, suggestions, new ideas, things like that. And I expect they do they go through you, or do they go through your office, or do they go through elected officials? How does that work, and and how do you maintain that dialogue with local residents of Oxford?

Pauline Garcia-Allen: I do talk to residents on a daily basis, but not as much as I would like. And what I always say is I don’t run the borough on a day-to-day basis. That is our incredible staff. Like, they’re the people who keep the municipality humming and keep services going so that people can get around and do what they need to do. 

My job is to look at the big picture and help with long-term planning so we’re sustainable and we’re efficient so that the staff gets the resources and the tools they need to do their job because I think that’s the best thing I can do for the residents. 

And then I’m also in a unique position where I need to communicate to our elected officials what all of this is like and what the needs are. Right? So that they have the county and the information they need to make, you know, informed decisions, sometimes very hard decisions and how they’re gonna affect each other and what the in the context of what the needs of the residents are.

Usually by the time kind of an issue gets to me, it’s, you know, something that is, hey, if somebody wants to talk to the Borough Manager, they’ll talk to the Borough Manager. I wanna talk to them. But I always try to empower the staff to work through things and, try to work through things that way. 

What I find though is that sometimes people just wanna be heard, and the more I hear and listen to what people’s concerns are, the better it makes me at my job as well.

Liam Dempsey: Speaking of letting your team and letting your staff carry on with the day-to-day running and handling all the things that need to be done to make the borough work and be effective, Tell us a little bit about the borough as an employer. 

And then in a related question, we know that many local employers are struggling to employ local folks as their respective pay levels make it impossible for those employers to live in Chester County. Does the borough face the same challenge?

Pauline Garcia-Allen: We do, but I feel like we’ve been pretty fortunate so far, in the sense that, like, you know, we have our own full-time police department and, you know, an accredited police department that is really focused on community policing and best practices. And our officers live in this community and live in this area. 

So, you know, our financial challenges as a municipality make it hard for us to be competitive, not only with the private sector but even with other boroughs and other municipalities. So what we find is is a lot of our folks are people who just really are committed to this area and love Oxford and Greater Oxford and come here and stay here and wanna work with the borough.

Erik Gudmundson: You mentioned earlier about housing limitations in the county, you know, prompting people to move to Oxford or at least to consider moving to Oxford. Has that challenge of increasing property values really hit Oxford in a slower way or just hasn’t reached Oxford yet?

Pauline Garcia-Allen: It’s definitely reached Oxford, and the fire really underscored the housing crisis for everybody and for us in the regions particularly because we lost 25 homes that were serving some of our lower-income families. 

And I think what you find around here is, a lot of single-family homes, and with the growth coming down the road and corridor that’s shown itself through single-family housing developments, right? But what we need more of is all of that inventory that isn’t that. It is different housing types, multifamily, you know, twins, apartments, things that are more affordable and things that are affordable at different price range and that’s not just in the context of what we think of as affordable housing but it’s what we call that missing middle or workforce housing. 

So part of what we’re working on is what can we do as a municipality to incentivize and make it easier to build that kind of housing here through our zoning and subdivision and land development ordinances, through our parking requirements, our water, those sorts of things. And then how do we try to find a good developer partner and a good parcel to try to make a project happen and try to add more of that inventory to our area?

Erik Gudmundson: The challenges of housing, the opportunities and hurdles presented by expansion along the Route 1 corridor, and even the post-fire recovery efforts you talked about require a lot of collaboration between key stakeholders in the region. You talked about how you’re doing that already, but would you please name a few of the organizations and stakeholders with whom you and your colleagues at the borough are currently collaborating? And I’d also like to know what issues are you collectively working to address.

Pauline Garcia-Allen: First and foremost, I would mention the surrounding townships. You know, one of the things that I love about living in Pennsylvania Commonwealth is that there are so many small municipalities, which gives the average resident greater access to their local government. Right? But as things grow and change and, it makes it harder sometimes to solve problems because issues of transportation or public safety don’t stop at your municipal borders. And, you know, we are keenly focused here on how it is that we try to work together to address some of these challenges.

I’m thankful that, we have the Oxford Regional Planning Committee, which is facilitated through the Chester County Planning Commission, and it is a group of the six municipalities that make up our part of the county. We meet every month. We have a regional plan, and we’re there seems to be more of a recognition than ever that our fates are tied together. Right? So, some of those key issues are definitely public safety and how do we make fire, police, and EMS services sustainable. It’s transportation and congestion as we grow and there’s development. How do we address those issues and housing? 

I mentioned before how we’re trying to find a good housing development partner and try to create an environment to make those projects happen, but we’re also recognizing that sometimes the best parcel and opportunity isn’t within the borough proper. It’s right outside in East Nottingham or in Lower Oxford. So I’m very thankful that there’s a dialogue there and an openness to think past our own little kind of corner of the Commonwealth and to try to work together.

Liam Dempsey: You talked a lot about the different stakeholders involved in making sure that Oxford continues to grow and flourish in ways. And getting back to the borough itself, you have Oxford Main Street, which is a business improvement district. And having worked for a business improvement district in The UK many, many moons ago, I was delighted to see that the Oxford community has embraced that. 

For folks that aren’t familiar with the concept, the Business Improvement District is kind of a collective, if you will, of businesses and organizations in a sub-region that comes together to, kinda tax themselves, if you will, pay a membership fee to provide services above and beyond what, in this case, the borough of Oxford can provide them, really with an idea toward creating greater value for the businesses and the surrounding community. With that said, from the borough’s perspective, Pauline, what does Oxford Main Street bring to your local community?

Pauline Garcia-Allen: We have a very unique and important relationship with Oxford Main Street, and one thing I try to remind folks is that it is different than our relationship with other social service organizations or other nonprofits working in the community. We’re tied together both by ordinance and by contract through the establishment of the business improvement district. And what they do is a lot of what I think would be the municipality’s responsibility if we didn’t have this establishment and unique relationship. 

OMI started as part of those, you know, early movements, as I mentioned, a couple of decades ago led by business leaders and people in the community to try to revitalize the downtown. And through that, OMI is really focused on, you know, initially and probably foremost place making. What makes Aquas unique? How do we create a sense of community and want and try to bring people downtown and bring people together? They’re also very much focused on supporting the local businesses that are here and what they need and then trying to attract new businesses. They’re changing in some of the approaches with the times and with the changing marketplaces, but we work together in our own unique ways to try to support what’s happening downtown.

Erik Gudmundson: There’s a lot of effort, it sounds like, that that’s undertaken by your staff. How big is the borough in terms of the number of employees?

Pauline Garcia-Allen: We have about 25 full-time employees. That’s broken down through 11 full-time police officers, five or six part-time. We’ve got a staff of six, full-time staff here at Borough Hall that includes code enforcement. We have our own water utilities, so the water department, finance, and administration. 

We have a public works department of eight incredible people who are out there, rain or shine, sleet, snow, whatever. And then we also have some actual, you know, code enforcement people and parking enforcement folks who go around the borough to help everybody be good neighbors and live together.

Erik Gudmundson: That’s a big group, and I’m sure they’re they’re doing even bigger things collectively. How are you hiring right now?

Pauline Garcia-Allen: We’re kind of we’re sort of always hiring in certain areas. Right? Like parking enforcement. We are looking for new police officers. We just had a civil service test a week ago. There’s not a lot of positions for we’re actively looking for. 

We actually were hiring last year as we were trying to add more staff to the codes department. We put all that information on our website. We always wanna know if there’s a good talent that is interested in getting involved with public service, especially if they’ve got an affinity and a love for Oxford.

Liam Dempsey: Pauline, I’m gonna bring it back to you again, as an individual. I read online that you’re into 80’s and 90’s music, and that you listen to a lot of podcasts. So the questions are these. What’s a go-to song or band for you from the 80’s? I’ll ask the same of the nineties, a go-to song or a go-to band from the 90’s. And then lastly, what podcasts are you binging on these days? What are you listening to?

Erik Gudmundson: That’s a big question. We could have a whole episode just about that, I have a feeling.

Pauline Garcia-Allen: It was actually the question I was probably the most nervous about, to be honest. So I’m a Gen Xer, and I love the 80’s. I love 80’s music. I love all 80’s music. My go-to band that kinda, you know, really spoke to me was when I was an angst-full teenager was U2, early U2. And I’ve been a big fan throughout the 80’s and 90’s and today. 90’s, you know, I went to college in the nineties. I wasn’t super into, like, the grunge scene and things like that, but, I did love Alice in Chains. There’s something about the uniqueness and yeah. I that there if there was a band I wish I had seen live in the 90’s, it’s Alice in Chains.

Liam Dempsey: I’ll share for our listeners that I did have a Lane Staley-style beard years ago where you’ll grow it long enough and then can braid it.

Erik Gudmundson: If you’re a regular listener to this podcast, you’ll hear little nuggets like that from Liam sprinkled all the way through. And I’d love to go back and see some of these pictures of outfits and styles that Liam has described, and, maybe maybe someday we’ll do that. I don’t know. 

The last part of Liam’s question, I wanted to ask you about it too. The podcast, what podcast are you binging these days?

Pauline Garcia-Allen: I am an avid podcast listener inpart because I don’t have time to read as much as I would, but podcasts are something that you can listen to when you’re multitasking quite a bit.

I am a political junkie as much as I try to proselytize that people should focus more on what’s happening in local politics and at the state level. I am a national political world politics, junkie. But I try to really get a full spectrum, of what’s out there. So I’ll listen to the Pod Save America Bros on the left. I try to look listen to the, you know, the folks that are over on the right. I really like the bulwark that are kind of the folks in the, you know, Republican Chester.

I also like podcasts that will, put things in historical context and help us understand maybe a little bit of the roots of the things, you know, from the past that helped us get to where we are today and how we struggle with what seem to struggle with the same issues over and over again.

29:42 Erik Gudmundson: Yeah. And I understand you’re originally from Colorado, which is a big difference from Chester County. But I have to ask, what do you enjoy most about living and working here in Chester County?

Pauline Garcia-Allen: I think it goes back to that location again. Right? I mean, I’m from Colorado, and when I moved out here, people were like, oh, don’t you miss the mountains? Like, you know, why did you do that? And I’m like, yes. I love the mountains. But from where I am now, I can spend the weekend in New York and take my kids to see a Broadway show. I can go down to DC. I can go to Philadelphia. I can there’s so much culture and heritage and so much you can experience within a drive or a train a train ride from here. And I’ve just fallen in love with the East Coast and never heard of Oxford, Pennsylvania before I moved here, but I’ve definitely fallen in love.

Pauline Garcia-Allen: Yeah.

Liam Dempsey: As a, as growing up in Illinois, it always surprises my friends from childhood that, you know, on any given afternoon within an afternoon’s drive, I can be in any one of five or six, seven states

Pauline Garcia-Allen: Yeah.

Liam Dempsey: And and and not have spent the entire day in the car. The East Coast is very, very different than where we grew up. Isn’t it PA?

Pauline Garcia-Allen: Yeah.

Liam Dempsey: So I’m gonna get on to one of our more challenging questions, and I I wonder how you’re gonna answer this given your role as the borough manager. But please share a local business or nonprofit that more folks should know about.

Pauline Garcia-Allen: I’d really like to highlight the work of two nonprofits, actually, if I can. And it goes back to the fire and, and how the community came together. There were so many nonprofits that came together, both LCH, the Chester. I mean, just people just average citizens came out in a way, that was just really heartwarming and remarkable. But there are two organizations that I really think, helped a lot of families that are already vulnerable families kind of do what they needed to do to find the help and the lifelines that they needed after the fire, and that is Neighborhood Services Center and an organization called Silo. Both of them are unique in their own way and do similar things but very different. Neighborhood Services is more of what you’d consider maybe a traditional, social service organization that helps community communities in need with food services, connecting them to different resources in the community, which was very necessary to help funnel funds to residents that were looking for new homes and needed to replace everything that they lost in the fire. And then there’s silo, which I had never heard of an organization like this before.

That to me is the organization that you’ve got your social service organizations and then and trying to get people to services, but sometimes there are people who just literally need somebody to be there for them in that moment and physically get them to places or go find them if they’re homeless wherever they are and find them a place to live and hold their hand and take them there and spend time with them in a way that a lot of traditional nonprofit organizations aren’t structured to do, and it really, I think, between those two organizations helps the families of the fire is unique, and in different ways that was needed and that we see that’s constantly needed even outside of an emergency or a terrible situation like a massive fire.

I appreciate that so many of your answers today have really revolved around the people and the culture of Oxford, and I think that’s a really important perspective, and that’s what makes Oxford interesting. But Oxford, as you pointed out earlier as well, has diverse and and deep history. The Oxford Historic District and the Oxford Hotel, I believe that’s the Octorrera Hotel, if I, if I remember correctly, comparing against the notes here, were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 02/2008. What does having historically recognized buildings add to your community?

t’s that unique sense of place, especially in a world where everything seems to get nationalized and conglomerized and all the stores kinda look the same. It’s like, what what makes your what makes your community unique and and gives business people together and gives them pride. It’s been so interesting to me. One of the things I’ve loved about working on county revitalization is getting to learn more about these old buildings that we’re trying to repurpose. Right? And how if many of these buildings are a hundred, a 50 years old, and you’d never guess it, but their basements are connected. Well, I just learned that their basements are connected because they were, you know, the underground railroad or right underneath the Mason-Dixon Line, and that is how people were able to move around. I feel like every story every building has its own unique story that contributes to the history of this place and why we think Oxford is unique and interesting and why people like being here.

Tell me a little bit about first Friday these days, or if there’s some different equivalent of it or, you know, where should people or when should people come out to Oxford to really experience that that culture and the place, that’s known as Oxford? And do you have any businesses or or big changes coming to to downtown, you know, in time for the spring and summer, strolling season?

First Fridays are organized and run through our Oxford Main Street organization. They run through the first Friday in May through December. December is known as County Christmas. Country Christmas is really what I would call if you think about, like, a Hallmark movie when everybody comes to town and they light the tree and people are, you know, drinking hot cocoa and singing carols and there’s a band. It really is that old that that historic small town feel. But a lot of the First Fridays have a unique theme like Hometown Harvest where they do a tractor parade and they take it through the retirement community that’s right here in the heart of the borough. Really trying to make unique ways to show Oxford’s community pride. And it does not just bring people from the borough together.

You get the townships. We even see people coming from Delaware and Maryland to come to First Friday and the different things that OMI is doing.

Liam Dempsey: You’ve talked a lot about how the the borough and the different stakeholders are and even the business come together through the improvement district and supporting the recovery after the fire and the like haave given a lot to the county. But how can folks from outside the borough, how can the wider Chester County community support the borough of Oxford?

Pauline Garcia-Allen: Come visit Oxford. Come check out what we have to offer. Right? I think that’s one of the the best things people can do. Learn more about community organizations and their history and and try and, you know, get involved when in whatever way you can. People’s time is so spread out, and it’s hard to really engage in your county. But pay attention, come visit us, freak you know, go to a restaurant, take a stroll. We have a a beautiful outside mural art exhibit that was done through, David Eldreth, the late David Eldreth, and the Oxford Arts Alliance. And it really brings some dynamic, histor,y and beauty to the downtown, which I think people will enjoy. They’ll see that we have a lot more to offer, especially, you know, if you don’t realize really how far Southern Chester County goes sometimes.

Erik Gudmundson: Pauline Garcia-Allen, Borough Manager of the Borough Of Oxford. Where can listeners connect with you and learn more about Oxford and its community?

Pauline Garcia-Allen: Sure. Our website is [oxfordborough.org]. You know, we are trying to be good stewards of social media and everything else and educate, the community about what we’re doing and how they can get involved. That would probably be the first step. You can always contact me that way as well. I’m always looking for feedback and to make new connections with people.

Liam Dempsey: Pauline, thanks for giving up your time today. Really appreciate it. Thanks so much.

Pauline Garcia-Allen: Mhmm.

Erik Gudmundson: Thank you to my cohost, Liam Dempsey. I’m Erik Gudmundson.

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