Buy immortality and help your communityA message from CTCC President Bruce Mazzoni Despite economic hard times, the Cranberry Township Community Chest, CTCC, has come up with a novel way of raising significant amounts of money for local nonprofits and giving benefactors a permanent legacy using any name of their choice1.
Here’s how it works: Park Place – an innovative 800-unit Traditional Neighborhood Development which is currently under construction in the Township – will have its own public roadway network. Creative Real Estate Development Corporation, the company behind the project, has offered CTCC the opportunity to auction off the naming rights to three of those streets over eBay. |
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”Bidders are free to use their own name, that of a loved one, a personal hero, or even the name of a business for their roadway. Some restrictions and limitations apply. For example, street names already in use, sound-alike names, offensive names, and names longer than 24 characters cannot be accepted. A detailed list of regulations, as well as of road names currently in use, are posted on the Township’s website. 
The first of the three 10-day auctions opens November 27, the day of Thanksgiving at 6 PM. The second & third auctions minutes after the first. Although there is no minimum bid or reserve price, the “Buy it Now” price for the largest of the three roads is $250,000. Proceeds from the sale will benefit a variety of cultural, recreational, and human service organizations that focus their work on Cranberry Township residents. The novelty of the sale concept should also help to raise the profile of CTCC itself, and to focus attention on its mission. CTCC was formed in 1975 to raise funds for an assortment of core municipal services in the then-rural Cranberry Township. Over time, many of those services – fire, ambulance, and library, among others – grew to become supported by dedicated taxes and user fees. As a result, CTCC’s original mission became less critical. But when the Township initiated research for its comprehensive planning process in 2005, it found that the community’s volunteer civic and nonprofit sector was weakening, not strengthening, as its population grew.
That decline led the Township’s Board of Supervisors in early 2007 to enter into a new relationship with CTCC and endorse its new mission: to strengthen Cranberry’s critical nonprofit sector and encourage local residents to become active participants in the vital work of those organizations. CTCC itself is an entirely volunteer organization. All of the money raised through the street naming sale will go toward supporting Cranberry’s civic and nonprofit organizations and to promoting their work. Bruce Mazzoni President, CTCC |
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