Last weekend, my wife and I sat on a pair of finely wrought iron chairs, soaking in the early spring sun sipping chai and munching on paratha rolls ( lightly fried Indian bread stuffed with spicy potatoes) and gourmet chocolate in a most unlikely place – Foxburg, a tiny town in Northwestern Pennsylvania perched above the Allegheny River.

In the late 19th century, Foxburg may have had more millionaires than anywhere else on earth, but when I was growing up in the late 1980s, it was just another Rust Belt casualty. Until Arthur Steffe, a retired surgeon applied his millions to remaking the town, undertaking, for example, the renovation of the Lincoln Hall a long forgotten theater on the second floor of Foxburg’s Public Library.

Last summer while waiting outside of Lincoln Hall for a show to start, I bought a fantastic coffee from a young husband and wife who had pulled up and left the big city and moved to tiny Foxburg to build a gourmet coffee and chocolate shop – Divani – that also happens to serve outstanding and authentic Indian breakfasts.

Now that the dust has settled from the industrial giants leaving, there’s a huge sense of freedom in these small towns in Northwestern PA– cheap rents and business friendly environment can bring some fantastic surprises like Divani’s Chocolate Boutique. It’s a fascinating time to visit this area and reap the benefits as it remakes it itself.