Business View Civil and Municipal | January 2021

105 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL JANUARY 2021 HUNT INGTON, INDI ANA have also been putting in downtown apartments and space. Taking areas that couldn’t be utilized before, but now they are making the investment to bring everything up to code so it can be used for living space and not just for warehousing downtown. I think that’s a trend we are going to see continue for us as a community. The previous administration did a great job knocking out several major elephants that were in the room and hindering some of that growth. They were just too big of a challenge for private investment and development on its own. So that public partnership became a real key.” Huntington is also seeing a boom in business investment. The local Chamber of Commerce has a partnership with Huntington University to help with small business start-up, primarily in the retail sector, and the new arts centre will soon have a dedicated space within for entrepreneurship. That is anticipated to be a great accelerant for the start of local businesses. Over the past five years, the city has seen 10 new businesses open up downtown and begin to expand in other spaces. The Mayor notes, “Folks are investing in those spaces. When we had our stay-at-home order in the spring, you could tell both new and long-time downtown businesses had punch lists of work they wanted to accomplish while there weren’t any customers in their stores. And they have done a great job of utilizing resources from the city, both the federal state dollars coming through for COVID relief and also façade grant improvement funds and otherwise to invest in themselves.” On the southern end of downtown – home to the city’s riverfront and twin bridges – work has been done over the past nine years to clean up and improve the riverfront, one of the city’s best natural features. Group riverfront cleanups are also part of the city’s many environmental initiatives. Strick hopes a cleaner riverfront will help encourage residents to make a greater investment in themselves and the environment. “We think that this is part of helping people appreciate a place, and what it means to take