Former County Commissioner Dave Black Retiring as CEO With Harrisburg Regional Chamber & CREDC

Ron Wilshire

Ron Wilshire

Published December 22, 2020 5:50 am
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CLARION, Pa. (EYT) — Clarion native Dave Black recently announced that he is retiring next year as president and CEO of the Harrisburg Regional Chamber & CREDC after serving for nearly 20 years.

(Pictured above: Flashback — Commissioner Dave Black in the earlier years with Commissioner Tom Armagost; Fred McIlhattan representing State Senator John Peterson; State Representative David Wright; and Commissioner Keith Martin.)

Black credits his years as Clarion County Register and Recorder and Clarion County Commissioner to prepare him for his Harrisburg career, starting in the Tom Ridge administration.

“In the end, it toughened me up and made me better at what I am and what I’ve been able to accomplish and what I’ve learned,” said Black in looking back. “I was in my 30’s when I was a commissioner, so that was like a lifetime ago, and it was a great experience. It just helped me develop leadership skills and management skills.”

Black still keeps his eye on developments back in his hometown, especially the involvement of younger people in the business, including the Miles Brothers’ activities, the Alexander’s with Mechanistic Brewing, new owners for Michelle’s café, and other industries.

Even plans to renovate the Knox Glass Company property to establish a new industry in Clarion County that manufactures construction pods is an exciting opportunity for Clarion County.

“Workforce is going to be the key to success. I know there are many people in Clarion County that drive god-awful distances to go to work. This could be a really nice alternative.

“They can find quality workers, and everybody has always said Clarion County workers have an extraordinary work ethic. It amazed me the number of people that were driving to Sharon to work in the steel mills or people in Knox who were driving to the Pittsburgh airport to work ground crews for the airlines.”

The mission of the Harrisburg Regional Chamber & CREDC is to be a catalyst for policy change, job creation, and business growth.

“Clarion was a great place to live in. I remember you could ride your bike anywhere in town. Before I took the job in Harrisburg, Shirley and my two children Erin and Jonathon, also had their opportunities to experience the Clarion lifestyle.

Dave and Shirley Black

Dave and Shirley Black

Black started in Clarion County in the 1980’s as Register and Recorder and then made the jump to county commissioner where he served seven and a half years (appointed once and elected twice) and resigned in 1994.

He even ran once unsuccessfully for State House and characterized it as a “slaughter.”

“But it paved dividends for stuff that I do now and have done over the years. I don’t know whether I would do it the same way if I knew the outcome, but I think the experience really paid dividends and then the county commissioner experience really helped me. This is a big organization we’ve got with two huge boards to manage, and the organizational skills that had to come into play as a county commissioner have just really paid off dividends here.”

We asked Black for his thoughts on some of the issues during his terms as commissioner.

Transition to a new Clarion County Jail

“It was tough, and you know, I give Commissioner Linda McCarthy a lot of credit. We walked in there cold and then did the research and looked at the current jail status and visited other jails and saw how inadequate the old jail was. The old jail was just a lawsuit staring us in the eye. The capacity was just a bad place to keep people. At one point, many church ladies attended an open house at the old jail to see what it was like.

“One lady who was a prominent member of the community pulled me aside a couple of days later, and she said, ‘I had no idea that it was that bad. A new one was needed.’ Some in the community said that it didn’t need to be built, but we knew it needed to be built.

“Those are the kind of things that people don’t want to stand up and say this is right,” said Black.

With plans by the current Clarion County Commissioners to move everything to the recently acquired Sorce Warehouse, they will be facing what to do with the old jail at some point.

Hazardous Waste Incinerator

A major accomplishment for the entire community was the defeat of a plan to build a hazardous waste incinerator in Clarion County.

“I think we managed that process well,” said Black. “I’ve talked to Commissioners in Union County where they wanted to build the other one, and they were spending money like crazy. We had some help from our state reps, the state senators, and the local PEACE group. We managed our legal costs and were a little more precise in fighting it. We didn’t go crazy with legal costs and used our political connections.

“We had a lot of hearings at local school auditoriums, and at the end of the day, we ended up on the right side of that thing. Some people would argue it would have been a great place for a hazardous waste incinerator, but that’s not the nature of Clarion County.

“The mission was never to forget. There were people all over the streets and storming the courthouse, and they wouldn’t let the people in, and then they let them in, they wouldn’t let them out. It was a night to remember that’s right here, but we got through it. Fortunately, nobody got hurt, and at the end of the day, we were successful, and I met some great people in the community.”

Spend No Money?

“Even though the whole jail thing, you know that the guys would come and stomp their feet and sit there and be grumpy. That’s just part of the political nature, and part of it was just that we don’t want to spend any money. We don’t need to spend any money. We shouldn’t spend any money, and a lot of those people were the same people that opposed any effort toward Economic Development.

“I had some of them tell me we would have to pay our people more if we got these extra jobs here because there’d be competition. Some wanted to pay only minimum wage. It was just awful the way some of those folks were, but it sure gave me great insight into the people, and I enjoyed the people we had at the meetings.”

Gaining a Master’s in Public Administration

“At the same time, I was doing work on my Master’s in Public Administration at Slippery Rock, and everything came together, and it was a good time to do it because you’re digging into stuff and then then you’re looking at the academic side of it. So that just made me more valuable.

On to Harrisburg

Black resigned as commissioner in 1994 and worked in investment banking.

The Pa. Secretary of Community Affairs was resigning, and Black was appointed to that position for about five months. He was then Deputy Secretary of DCED and finished as a chief operating officer of Team Pennsylvania.

Black joined the Chamber & CREDC in 2001, building a talented staff and increasing the organization’s capacity to serve Chamber members, CREDC clients, and the broader community; to advocate for public policy, and to collaborate in positioning the organization and region for the future.

“I was by that time early 40 or 41, and then I was the old man. While I was Commissioner, I was called kid most of the time because Tom and Keith were much older. In Harrisburg, my executive assistant was a 23-year-old who just graduated the year before from IUP, but we did some great things. It was fun to work with these young, energetic kids. I mean that respectfully because they were young, but just outstanding folks, and to watch them — a lot stayed in the Harrisburg area — and I’ve watched them evolve and do other great things. They started companies here and there, or they’re leading major corporations.

“It’s really been a great inspiration, impacting the lives of folks and seeing them say thanks. I think that’s what part of what we’re supposed to do as we get older — encourage the next generation.”

Economic Development

“On the economic development side, I think I know we’re up to over $450 million in projects that we’ve gotten money throughout the region, and we’ve helped to retain and create businesses. Our number is about 16,000, and they’ve been able to make loans of all sizes and shapes.

“Our loan grants for some industrial site reuse led to all kinds of fun projects. We did a project out in Hershey, and we’re continuing to expand and work with the Hershey Center for Applied Research. We are trying to leverage some of the intellectual capital out of the Penn State College of Medicine.

“We can also be proud of the chamber side. We’ve built a really effective government relations program. We’ve got a hugely active committee. We had our congressmen on a zoom call yesterday, and we had 80 people on the call. On a couple of different occasions, we have stepped into diversity and inclusion, and now we’re taking a look at the whole systemic racism issue and in some conversations and have a couple of initiatives in that direction.

“The chamber stuff includes networking and getting people together — even by Zoom. We had our annual awards last Wednesday. We set up a little broadcast studio at the Hilton, and we had 300 people online watching the awards.

“This is a really vibrant region, and our population growth has just been extraordinary. We serve as kind of the front door to the region for companies that want to come here and want to expand, and we’ve got these.”

More to come?

There are many more accomplishments reported at https://www.harrisburgregionalchamber.org. Just listening to Dave outline projects can be exhausting and may explain his decision to retire.

Black isn’t ruling out doing something else after he retires, but he offers one observation: “I just know I don’t want to do as much of it.”

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