Alyssa Cwanger, Post-Gazette Wayne Teeple, president of the Vandergrift Improvement Program, center, leads the VIP's monthly meeting Wednesday evening at the Victorian Vandergrift Museum and Historical Society in Vandergrift. At right is VIP Design Chairwoman Ann Peel. Click photo for larger image.

VANDERGRIFT, Pa. -- A former company steel town overlooking a bend of the Kiskiminetas River, Vandergrift was born of a radical notion for its time: that the best steelworker was a churchgoing, educated man who could own a home, live in a nice, leafy neighborhood and walk through a park on his way to the mill.

George McMurtry, president of Apollo Iron and Steel Works, wanted his Westmoreland County mill town to be "unique and in all respects more attractive than the average manufacturing town of the present day." He asked Frederick Law Olmsted, a landscape architect who designed New York's Central Park and the grounds of the U.S. Capitol, to design a new kind of industrial town, one ahead of its time.

Years later, Vandergrift's curving streets, rounded buildings and numerous parklets would win awards at the St. Louis World's Fair and be listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

At its peak during World War II, the mill employed 5,000. But when the steel industry declined, people started leaving, and much of Vandergrift's lively downtown went dark.

Now the Vandergrift Improvement Program, or V.I.P., a group of residents trying to bring their town back to some semblance of its former glory, is staking its revitalization on another radical notion -- this time in the form of the Natural Step guiding objectives, based on ecological principles developed by scientists in Sweden.

The Natural Step objectives are all about sustainability: reducing humans' impact on the land, using alternative energies such as wind power, using recycled metals and nontoxic substances, organic gardening and adding more green space, even building "green roofs" -- all in the hope of bringing back Vandergrift's struggling economy. Vandergrift, population 5,000, finds itself in the company of places such as Burlington, Vt.; Santa Monica, Calif.; and Madison, Wis. -- larger, more economically prosperous cities where such earth-friendly, New Age ideas aren't radical at all.

"[Vandergrift] is an industrial town, so it seems hard to imagine it happening here," said Cindi Contie, 41, who was born and raised in Vandergrift, but left for many years to pursue a career as a corporate executive. Ms. Contie returned to Vandergrift a year and a half ago for the sole purpose of bringing sustainability to her hometown. "But people in Vandergrift are pretty down to earth already, so to them it makes sense."

Once, the smoke-filled valley and lifeless river were testaments to Vandergrift's economic vitality. Now, the town is looking to capitalize on its picturesque design and its history of innovation, someday marketing itself as an eco-municipality: green, modern, sustainable.

"When Cindi first came to us, I thought she was crazy," said Wayne Teeple, VIP president. "I was like, 'Go hug a tree somewhere else.' "

Last summer, Mr. Teeple and Ms. Contie were among a small contingent that traveled to Sweden to observe Natural Step projects in action. They say the concepts are beginning to catch on with local residents. So far, VIP has started a downtown farmer's market featuring local growers, and is working with city officials to turn an unsightly parking lot into a greener, more permeable space. This allows storm water runoff to percolate into the soil rather than picking up oil, gasoline and toxic chemicals from the asphalt and contaminating the groundwater.

Ms. Contie sees a cleaned-up Kiskiminetas River as a center of recreational activity, paralleled by a hiking and biking trail to Apollo. Other potential projects include downtown streetscaping, installing street furniture made of recycled materials, and putting "green roofs" on the many Vandergrift buildings with aging or busted roofs.

And green means green. More and more businesses are beginning to see sustainability as a market advantage, said Ms. Contie -- organic foods being one of the fastest-growing markets. She wants to contact universities to find people interested in living and working in a kind of laboratory of sustainability.

"We feel it will work," said Mayor Louis Purificato, who was a Vandergrift police officer for 36 years, chief of police for 10 years. "There's a lot of people with the environment on their minds, and as they become the entrepreneurs of the future, they may consider a town like this."

Get Thursday nights back

A town like this was, in 1895, a revolutionary thing. Parks were plotted out, and natural gas, water and electric lines were installed before any lots were sold. The best lots were given to churches, and Mr. McMurtry paid for half their building costs, said Bill Hesketh, of the Victorian Vandergrift Museum and Historical Society. Vandergrift was the first company town where workers could own their homes. But many workers couldn't afford the $1,500 lots, so they moved up the hill and farther out, where they could buy a piece of land with an outhouse and a well for $250, said Mr. Hesketh. These areas later became Vandergrift Heights and East Vandergrift. When Mr. McMurtry realized the original lots weren't making enough of a profit, he abandoned Olmsted's design, and the two had what Mr. Hesketh described as "a tiff." As a result, only half of present-day Vandergrift adhered to Olmsted's vision.

By 1907, the steel mill was the largest rolling mill in the world, finishing the steel for the Gateway to the West Arch in St. Louis. The Vandergrift foundry produced the hinges for the locks of the Panama Canal. Immigrants populated Vandergrift -- the signs in the mill were written in six languages.

Boarding houses sprang up around town, and the population crested to 10,000. Pollution from industry and coal-burning home furnaces choked the valley; Mr. Hesketh remembers standing across the river and not being able to see town.

He spoke about Thursday nights in Vandergrift, when the downtown streets were a crush of people, families shopping at the many grocery stores, the department stores, the five-and-dime. Those vivid memories can be paralyzing for many residents, who can't imagine a way back to that kind of prosperity.

"People who live here say, 'That's what I want to see,' " said Mr. Hesketh. But it's never going to be what it once was, "So they say, 'Why even try? Because we won't be able to get those Thursday nights back.' "

V.I.P. members are going after state funds to change the image of downtown, rehabilitating the storefront facades and attracting new businesses. They see a strong connection between economic redevelopment and sustainability.

When she toured the so-called eco-municipalities of Sweden, the most inspiring example Ms. Contie took away was called the Green Zone. An entrepreneur set up a sustainable business plaza, featuring a McDonald's fast food restaurant, a gas station and a Ford dealership -- three things that seem the opposite of sustainability.

All the buildings have green roofs, insulating them in the winter and summer, cutting down on heating and cooling costs. The gas station's carwash operates on recycled water. The Ford dealer uses solar energy. All the parking lots are permeable surfaces. The McDonald's sells organic meats, and the exhaust from the McDonald's fryers is captured, filtered and used in the heating system.

Ms. Contie doesn't expect all the Swedish models to transfer smoothly onto Vandergrift.

"The way things happen in Vandergrift won't be the same as it goes in other places," she said. "Vandergrift is designed with a lot of green space; it has a history of that. We'll build out of that.''

Leave town for work

Mr. Hesketh offers a measuredly optimistic view of Vandergrift's attempts to go green.

"Just simply saying we're going to have better water is not good enough," he said. "It has to be better water for better swimming and boating facilities, more reasons for people to move to Vandergrift. If we don't get the people moving back into town, then no matter what you do, it's not going to work."

Mr. Hesketh predicts most residents' responses to the Natural Step blueprint will be:

"Show me what you're going to do. Show me we can do it, show me it's worth the expenditures. In the long run, we may end up with more expensive water, more expensive electricity from wind turbines. People are willing to do it if you show them, and it's not just some professor out of Michigan State saying, 'Oh, this is the way to go.' "

Mr. Hesketh likes to look at the history of Vandergrift "through the eyes of George McMurtry." His dream was a utopian town, Mr. Hesketh said, where all the workers owned their own homes, where all the workers walked to church every Sunday with their children in tow.

"My dream is to bring back that utopian idea. Except it's not going to have 5,000 people working in that plant, it's not going to have all those businesses downtown. It will have people back living in town; the only difference is they're going to drive to Butler for their jobs."