Steve DeAngelo Named 2023 Tigard’s First Citizen Award Recipient
Photo Credit: Pamplin Media Group/Jaime Valdez
Steve DeAngelo has been selected as the 2023 Tigard’s First Citizen.
This award recognizes someone who has made in-depth, long-term volunteer contributions to the Tigard community over the years. The winner is active, involved, interested and enthusiastic about making Tigard a nice place to live and work. This individual excels in any area of unpaid endeavor of education, social services, youth work, and community improvement of public services. This award is given in the spirit of all volunteers who remain unknown. The recipient joins the ranks of those previously honored in continually striving to improve the Tigard Area.
Steve DeAngelo has spent thousands of hours of volunteering and playing a vital role in the
revitalization of Downtown Tigard, the greater Tigard Community, and The Portland Metropolitan Area for over 40 years.
His most visible contributions to Tigard are predominantly found in the Downtown Core where he has been instrumental in the efforts to put Downtown Tigard on the map as a destination for all.
As the Past President of the Tigard Downtown Alliance, an all-volunteer led non-profit organization focused on the revitalization of Downtown Tigard, Steve brought together key stakeholders from the City of Tigard, Tigard community and local businesses to help grow and revitalize Downtown Tigard into what you will see unveiled later this year. Under his leadership the Tigard Downtown Alliance:
- Founded and organized itself with Bylaws and Articles of Incorporation in 2014
- Organized, applied for and received its 501 c (3) status in Feb 2016
- Applied for and received a $52K WCVA grant and raised $9.5K in private funding to design, purchase and install new Main Street décor and functional elements like the hanging glass baskets, bike racks, bike fix stations, additional benches, and the cross-street banner system.
- Applied for and received a $5K Metro grant for a SubUrban Art project as part of Artwalk 2015, which won an Oregon Main Street Award.
- Continued and has assisted growing three major community events: Street Fair, Trick or Treat Main Street and Holiday Tree Lighting leveraging Steve’s event planning experience.
- Toured the Lake Oswego Gallery Without Walls which gave the TDA some vision for what could be in downtown as it relates to art. Steve used various connections made in that process and through ArtWalk (This year’s event will be the 8th Annual event created by the TDA) to locate and install now 2 pieces of art in the Downtown core, One Nothing at the corner of Burnham and Ash, Mobius next to Symposium Tigard/Tigard Chamber and an artistic Butterfly by Tigard Chiropractic.