Rogerson: Objective to start clearing Richwood improvement space by yr’s finish

MORGANTOWN — After three years of analysis, dialogue and planning, the reimagining and redevelopment of some 9.5 acres alongside Morgantown’s Richwood Avenue has reached the “motion part.” 

Morgantown Space Partnership CEO Russ Rogerson mentioned the town is presently working to make the most of some $700,000 accessible by means of the Willey, Spruce, Brockway TIF district to start razing the 55 buildings unfold throughout the property. 

The objective, Rogerson defined throughout a public data session held Wednesday night within the Woodburn Group Heart, is to begin bringing these buildings down by the tip of the yr.  

Except for the previous Richwood Grill (318 Richwood Ave.), these previous properties previously represented some 300 beds of scholar housing. 

These days are gone. 

Jay Rogers, of Omni Associates, defined the imaginative and prescient of grasp developer Biafora Holdings will not be stacks of bedrooms, gasoline stations and quick meals, however an space adjoining to the town’s downtown centered on combined use highlighting livability, walkability and sense of place. 

“They know the college isn’t trying to develop. There’s not a necessity for all these beds. The beds are on the market,” Rogers mentioned. “In addition they know there’s a necessity for one thing reasonably priced for workforce and for younger professionals they usually know these sort of individuals need to be in an space the place they’ll stroll and get espresso or stroll and have dinner or go to a faucet home or tavern.” 

Rogers mentioned an ideal instance of the imaginative and prescient for this undertaking could be seen in Louisville, Kentucky’s Fourth Road. 

To that finish, undertaking planners have shifted the preliminary focus away from the deliberate unit improvement method and can ask the town’s planning fee to think about rezoning the world to B-1 (neighborhood enterprise) when it convenes this month.  

Within the B-1 district, buildings have to be between two and 4 tales above avenue degree however can’t be greater than 40 ft in peak. Buildings could be combined use however can’t be strictly residential in a B-1 district. 

Rogerson mentioned it’s virtually unattainable to tug collectively practically 10 contiguous acres of property close to a metropolis’s downtown, making this course of crucial to the town’s future. 

“We see this as the primary, present, new improvement to supply the sort of issues all of us need to see and the issues we like once we go to different locations,” he mentioned, including “If we do that with enter and dialog all through, we really feel strongly we’ll be extra profitable.” 

The property was bought for $11.8 from the Giuliani household by the Monongalia County Growth Authority in late 2020. MCDA falls beneath the Morgantown Space Partnership umbrella. 

A lot of the redevelopment space falls throughout the metropolis’s Willey, Spruce, Brockway TIF district, which was created in 2014.