Business View Magazine | February 2020

210 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE FEBRUARY 2020 so, we’re identifying areas inside of this large district that we can tackle. “One of those happens to be centered around a green space, a county-owned park that’s largely unused now, but it has, probably, a hundred or more homes around it that are in good enough shape to make a start with some revitalization. We want to focus our attention on that and, maybe, come up with a theme, or a plan, to incentivize developers or investors to come in and redevelop this area into something that’s affordable, yet attractive, that would allow younger folks or working families to live there happily, enjoy the open space, and then be able to walk or ride a bike into our downtown. So, we’re excited about it and see it as about a 20-year project. We feel that’s going to be one of our next big priorities - to see if we can turn this once grand neighborhood, that’s become somewhat blighted, into another grand neighborhood in a more modern way. And I think we can pull it off, one bit at a time.” “The residents who live there are happy there and they’re not moving out, unlike in many other communities, where these types of neighborhoods have tons of vacant properties,” Mann adds. “We don’t have that here. In fact, it’s growing twice as fast as the rest of our city, and what our study showed is that if you fix these properties up to a greater level, most of the residents there now have the ability to pay a little more in rent. So, it’s a good proposition versus many cities that have the same issues that we’re having. And we think we have a story that we can share with investors.” Downey agrees. “We were pleasantly surprised,” he remarks. “Although the area is in disrepair and has been somewhat neglected for years, there is certainly some demand to live there. Even the consultants were pleasantly surprised because they said that, sometimes, they go into these areas and it’s quite the opposite - that one of the biggest challenges is to convince folks to want to live in these areas. And that’s not a hurdle we f Transportation