East End of Town

I notice that a lot of work is going on downtown relative to the "mall" and the parking lot behind the State National (now U S) Bank. I'm not exactly sure what is intended, but the City is to be commended about the work they sponsor and the projects undertaken in the downtown area. Without the City's intervention, the downtown story would be an entirely different tale.

But, downtown is not the whole town. Area neighborhoods everywhere are deserving of municipal attention. A lot of the blocks along Forest Avenue have deteriorated badly in the past twenty years. Some parts of Eastland are savaged by drug dealers. East Second Street is still in pretty good shape, but parts of Williams Street could be improved. Lower socio-economic neighborhoods certainly need attention.

Of course, there is little a muncipality can do about private property, unless it fails to meet code requirements and then, the options are limited. But there are some opportunities that might avail themselves if attention were paid to timely identifying blighted areas and addressing problems as they arise.

The "Renaissance Committee" of the City of Maysville has been an extraordinarily effective device for staying on top of downtown problems and bringing imaginative solutions to those problem. That program was a state-sponsored and, to a limited degree, state-funded effort to address deteriorating old-town commercial (downtown) areas in cities all over the Commonwealth.

Just because, however, the state was involved in Renaissance does not mean that the concept could not be used in connection with other neighborhoods. A committee or committees could be appointed, comprised of thoughtful residents of the affected part of town, who would draw boundary lines around the areas to be included for re-vitalization. Specific problems could be identified and the committee, with help from the City staff, could arrive at solutions. A lot of ideas would not necessarily involve a lot of money; nonetheless, with the stimulus funds looking for "shovel ready" projects, it is entirely conceivable that projects could be developed with dispatch and application made for their funding and implementation.

For example, there is a lot of vacant warehouse space in the 800 block of Forest Avenue between Union and Wood Streets, and also including the area of the old Southwestern warehouse on the north side of the railroad. Not all of those facilities are unused, but their current use is not nearly so profitable as it once was. If those buildings were demolished, the vacant ground would, with work, make attractive neighborhoods or, perhaps an up-town park. What if Parker Tobacco Co. was converted to loft apartments. Whatever the possibilities, it makes most sense to let the people who live there make the decisions about ultimate use.

To be a good place to live, Maysville needs to be a good place for everybody who lives here. The struggle to keep things up is never over, and successes are bound to be interspersed with failure. We just cannot ever give up!