Well, a huge reason why the bankruptcy was declared was to remove as much debt as possible. That sounds like a good thing, but like a regular person declaring bankruptcy, it destroys their credit - so their ability to get things like bond financing for economic or community development is essentially impossible now. They're likely going to be reliant on state government for all of their money going forward. Hopefully some of the federal infrastructure money can be used for expensive road, water, electric, etc infrastructure repairs and maintenance, but that isn't going to be enough to keep their head above water.

Anyway, the fact that there's basically nothing positive about Chester's future outlook means that even the speculators don't care to invest any money there. So it seems to be spiraling downward with no real hope for things improving without an extremely long and painful period of despondency.