I'm the founder / CEO of Etsy, and I'm good friends with Greg, the fella behind the Mt Morris project. He's an amazing guy. He's well over 6 feet tall, wears overalls every day, and does most of his business from his pickup truck.<p>I've learned more about business & integrity from folks like him than anyone else.
I went to school at Cornell, which isn't too far from the town in the article. There are dozens of other towns like this in central New York, and the larger cities like Rochester, Syracuse, Binghamton, and Elmira aren't doing that well either. It's great to see someone trying to stop what feels like inevitable decline.<p>EDIT: It's also nice to see him running it as a business, rather than a creepy charity case as happened in Aurora, NY:<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora,_Cayuga_County,_New_York#Changes_since_2000" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora,_Cayuga_County,_New_York...</a>
Please stop linking to stories on sites with random pay/registration walls. 90% of the time I can't get to linked nytimes stories. If no one links to them, they might take a hint and start opening up. I don't care if its free or not, I'm not registering for yet another account just to read some random article.