Athens, Ohio

8 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 3, ISSUE 3 assistance will invoke the creation of affordable housing for the community – something that the area needs badly to facilitate growth. Given that Athens has such a rich, historical background, it is no surprise that they have quite a striking downtown area. Patterson explains, “In Athens, the historic retail/commerce area is what we call “Uptown”. We don’t have a downtown; we have an uptown because it sits on a hill. And since the early 1800s it’s been the core of the city itself.” In the Uptown area, Court and Union are the major crossroads and it serves as the gateway to Ohio University’s original historic college green. There are a lot of restaurants, bars, and small retail stores along the way to include small-town businesses like “Ohio is Home”, where you’ll discover laser-cut wood products like coasters, key chains, artwork, and the like. Additionally, you’ll find the East State Street corridor with major retail spots from Aldi to Texas Roadhouse, Menards, and Kroger. From an environmental standpoint, the City of Athens just completed a $7 million street rehab, removing a 60-year-old deteriorated concrete roadway, and installing bio cells in the sidewalks to support native plant life. The idea is that it will collect and filter sidewalk and parking lot water to water plants and clean up runoff before it hits the Hocking River. “The other thing is that we renovated our water treatment plant here in Athens back in 2017/2018,” says Patterson. “With that project, we put a 178 KW solar array behind the meter feeding into the water treatment plant.” In turn, the local energy company chose Athens as one of two pilot sites in Ohio for a large battery backup system that feeds off the solar array by day, feeding into the water treatment plant by night. The city also hopes to form a complete EV fleet of electric or hybrid vehicles for public transit and other purposes. Athens already has a fast charge EV station for public use, and they will soon even have an electric bus as a part of their ATHENS , OHIO