DANVILLE -- Three college interns toured Danville Monday on their first day in town to design and paint an approximate 1,000-square-foot mural at an entranceway along the Susquehanna River.

Danville is at least the second Valley community benefiting from the intern program sponsored by the Pennsylvania Downtown Center. Sunbury will use interns provided by the program to do landscaping work in the Hill Neighborhood. The river is expected to be the unifying theme of the Danville mural, to be painted on the Gerst Building at 9 Mill St., since the mural will face the north branch of the river and two parks, said Danville Main Street Manager and Danville Business Alliance Executive Director Jim Wilson.

He expects community meetings to be held so the students can get comments from the public on what they would like to see in the mural and to see their preliminary sketches, which will also include historical happenings in Danville.

Working on the mural will be Erin Mahaney, of Buffalo, N.Y.; Min Park, of Harrisburg and Tricia Falco, of Collegeville.

Their work is sponsored by the Pennsylvania Downtown Center, Iron Heritage Festival, Montour County Historical Society, Danville High School and Danville Business Alliance.

They will receive stipends from the downtown center which will also pay for most of the paint and supplies. If the budget is exceeded, the business alliance will provide the remaining supplies. The business alliance has also arranged housing for the students who are here for 10 weeks.

"Part of our training was at the Philadelphia Mural Arts Society," Falco said of working with master muralists. She will be a junior at Albright College in Reading, majoring in art and elementary education.

"We are real excited to be here," said Mahaney who will be a sophomore at the State University of New York, majoring in geography.

"We learned a lot of advanced techniques," Park said who received an associate arts degree in art and design and fine art from Harrisburg Community College and this fall will study interior design at the Moore College and Art & Design in Philadelphia.

The mural is expected to cover 900 to 1,000 square feet.

The students will need help from volunteers to paint the mural. Anyone able to volunteer is asked to contact the business alliance at 284-4502.

They expect to finish the project by early or mid August.

n E-mail comments to kblackledge@dailyitem.com.