Johnstown edevelopment Authority executive director Melissa Komar poses for a photograph. The Johnstown native still considers herself a “plain Jane girl from the West End,” despite working her way up through the city government, making strong connections along the way. Courtesy photo

JOHNSTOWN — As part of her job as the executive director of the Johnstown Redevelopment Authority, Melissa Komar has accomplished a lot in both her professional and personal life.

Komar recently earned a career recognition award in April during the governor’s awards for local government excellence in Harrisburg, where she was recognized for her help in securing over $30 million in local, state and federal grants.

The money was used in part to fund blight elimination, with more than 600 structures demolished, and to provide brownfield funding that boosts economic development within the city of Johnstown and the region of Cambria County.

Serving as the president of the Pennsylvania Municipal Authorities Association since 2023, she was also recognized for initiating the first-ever Authorities Future Leaders Scholarship Program to help broaden younger people’s understanding of municipal government and authority management.

Born and raised in Johnstown, Komar still considers herself a “plain Jane girl from the west end” despite working her way up through the ranks of city government as Johnstown’s interim city manager in 2016 before joining JRA as its executive director in 2017.

Many who know her said it’s the passion she has to make her city the best it possibly can be and her love and compassion for other people that drives her to work hard for the community’s residents.

“Passion plays more of a role than anyone thinks,” she said. “You can fight the good fight all day long, and if you’re willing to continue fighting that fight, you’ll be successful.”

Komar said she has a hard time taking no for an answer. She believes, even if she doesn’t know the answers to all of life’s problems, someone, somewhere, has a solution. It’s the strong connections she has made with others that enables her success, she said.

“I feel like everything we work on within the city — regardless of if it’s an infrastructure project, if it’s an economic development project, if it’s bringing a property back into reuse — it’s brick by brick, block by block. Nothing happens overnight,” she said, adding it takes a team effort to be successful.

According to Komar, “we can all make our little part of the world the best that it can be.” But it takes a landscaper who understands greenspace, an engineer to design a new infrastructure project and a journalist to present the message to the general public to make a community as great as it is.

“We all play a role here, and I think that it takes so much time for people to understand that every part of the puzzle is so important,” she said.

The Johnstown Redevelopment Authority’s main mission is to eliminate blight while bringing properties back into reuse, Komar said. For the longest time, according to Komar, it was difficult for so many Johnstown residents to continue investing in their property while seeing so many blighted structures next door to them.

“Not only are we continuing to demolish blighted structures but we’re also able to assist the needs of property owners to eliminate future demolition,” she said.

In her personal life, Komar is heavily involved in community efforts with her sister, Melana Simms, as part of the West End Improvement Group and the Greater Johnstown Youth League baseball program.

Simms said her sister is a “very giving person” who is always open to help anybody in need.

If Komar sees someone and thinks she can link them up with any type of program, service or opportunity, “she will stop and talk to anybody absolutely anywhere,” Simms said.

“I’ve been places with her over the years where she’ll just start a conversation with a complete stranger and throughout the conversation, she’ll find some resource that can help them with some aspect of their life,” she said.

Simms said she’s proud of her sister, who is “very well deserving” of any recognition she gets.

“She just pours her heart and soul into our community, and I feel that any recognition she gets is well deserved,” Simms said.

Cambria County Commissioner Tom Chernisky said the news didn’t surprise him when he found out Komar was being honored with an award in Harrisburg. He said Komar has a “winning attitude” and constantly brings positive statewide attention to the county.

“She’s helped so many people over the years and she just keeps moving forward,” Chernisky said of Komar. “She gets stuff done and she has the best interests in the city of Johnstown, Cambria County and the region. She wants good things to happen.”

Discover Downtown Johnstown Partnership President Melissa Radovanic said she met Komar in 2015 when the partnership launched its Christmas tree at Central Park campaign. Komar was Johnstown’s assistant city manager at the time.

Since then their friendship and mutual respect has only grown stronger through the various projects they’ve worked on together over the years.

“She’s a dedicated public servant. She cares about this community and cares about making Johnstown a better place to live, work and raise a family,” Radovanic said, adding Komar often “went above and beyond what was required of her” in her day-to-day government role.

“She would often be seen helping with community projects, cleanups, cutting grass in public areas and helping with a lot of community volunteer groups and organizations,” she said. “That went a long way in the community in terms of showing her dedication to it.”

Komar said she started working at the city for $10.67 an hour and continued on because she loves Johnstown, which is why she encourages local youth to find what they love to do and do it to the best of their ability.

She said if someone told her they love frying French fries at McDonald’s, she would encourage them to continue frying those French fries “because you will end up being a district manager or an owner of McDonald’s because you’re doing what you love.”

Loving what you do and being passionate about it is part of the discussion she frequently has with prospective business owners who are interested in moving to the city.

“I’m not telling them something I think they should do, I’m telling them something I live,” Komar said, adding she’s also proud to be a graduate of a city school and to be an alumna of Pitt-Johnstown.

Komar started out as a sociology major but was inspired by her geography professor, Bill Kory, whose classes she always enrolled in, to change her major to geography.

“I went home and I talked to my parents, and I remember my dad saying, ‘What do you plan on doing with that?’ Every now and then we joke and I say, ‘Hey, that geography degree didn’t turn out so bad,'” she said.

Because of her understanding and real-world knowledge of geographic information systems and cartography, she was asked to serve as an adjunct instructor during the spring 2011 semester when one of the campus’ social science professors had “an emergency health situation” and took a leave of absence.

Komar said Raymond Wrabley, the Social Sciences Division chairman, called her one morning while she was working at the city and asked her to fill in.

“I said, ‘I have a bachelor’s degree in geography’ and he said, ‘But you understand the software and you understand the makeup of land.’ It was an amazing semester there where I was really able to understand the college-level students, and I was able to provide real data from the city,” she said.

Of all her accomplishments, the one Komar is the most proud of is a playground rehabilitation project of Oakhurst Park along Route 56. The project was supposed to cost $256,000, but the city ended up paying $1,500 for the repairs because Komar was able to leverage funds between Cambria County, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.

It was the first project for which Komar oversaw the work, the grants and the infrastructure upgrades from start to finish.

“That was the start to me understanding how you could truly leverage dollars,” she said. “No one wants to be the first one to jump in but if you create that positive environment and leverage dollars at all levels, you could have a very positive end result for minimum tax dollars.”

Mirror Staff Writer Matt Churella is at 814-946-7520.