The Skate Park, a component of the South Bethlehem Greenway Master Plan, has had tremendous support from the skating community. Homebase Skateshop owner Andrew Po has been a leading active proponent for the Skate Park, involved in its design process, and a staunch strategist on how to secure additional capital dollars for its construction and long-term maintenance. The park has been conceptually designed for below the 4th Street Bridge.

There has been a total of $260,000 in public and private dollars secured for the Skate Park and the City of Bethlehem continues its innovativeness in creating unique funding partnerships and leveraging of dollars. Bethlehem.clusty.com will offer users of the City’s website a powerful alternative to search the web, while helping to generate dollars towards the Skate Park.

Developed by Vivisimo, an internationally acclaimed and award winning technology company headquartered in Pittsburgh, Bethlehem.clusty.com will serve as the city’s new search engine that offers powerful search technology enabling the organization of unwieldy search results in an innovative way. The technology helps users conquer information overload and returns search results organized by themes. This partnership will bring the City and skate enthusiasts one-step closer to realizing the Skate Park. Each 1000 searches at Bethlehem.clusty.com will generate roughly $12.00, which the City will dedicate to the Skate Park.

Vivisimo has very successfully enabled government search since 2005. Beginning with the introduction of a U.S. government search tab at gov.clusty.com to search political and government-related information, Vivisimo also provides search for the City of Pittsburgh, the official U.S. government portal (www.USA.gov), and New Zealand’s State Services Commission to name a few.

Bethlehem will be the first city in the United States to leverage web search as a sustainable funding alternative to supplement federal and state resources for an urban initiative. The resource partnering initiative with Vivisimo is part of Mayor Callahan’s vision for tying innovation within government processes to further foster economic development and expansion. As the first local project to benefit from Bethlehem.clusty.com, the skate park is a prime example of another partnered project in the City of Bethlehem, one that has been a collaborative effort advanced by our local skateboard enthusiasts and supported by students, businesses, local residents and the City.