Leaders: Code enforcement is vital in reviving Main Streets

Monessen Mayor Ron Mozer attended a forum Friday at WCCC.

By JOE NAPSHA
TribLive

Any effort to revitalize Main Streets in Westmoreland County’s older communities needs to include code enforcement initiatives, several community leaders said Friday.

“Code enforcement has to be part of it,” said Monessen Mayor Ron Mozer. Mozer was speaking at the Westmoreland County Redevelopment Authority and Land Bank program on Main Street revitalization Friday at Westmoreland County Community College, near Youngwood.

Monessen has launched a redevelopment initiative along Donner Avenue, which is one of two downtown main streets in the Mon Valley community. It’s paying for the effort with about $143,000 from the state and Local Share Account money from Live Casino in Hempfield. Both of the town’s main streets are parallel to the Monongahela River and are peppered with empty storefronts and buildings in disrepair.

Efforts to revitalize a community’s Main Street needs to have the right approach to code enforcement — one that does not emphasize penalizing property owners with fines but working with them to improve their buildings, Mozer said.

Getting properties into comp liance with building codes is important to economic development, said Andrew Matheny, a code enforcement and zoning enforcement officer for Latrobe.

If a community doesn’t take care of its older properties, they end up in disrepair and become neglected, Matheny said.

Without tackling those problems with code enforcement, residents move away and the city loses the taxes, added Joshua Mayro, another Latrobe code enforcement and zoning enforcement officer, Jeannette plans to seek state funding for a Main Street program that would start next year, said Kristie Linden, program manager for the Jeannette Initiative.

She said Jeannette is starting to move forward with some Main Street improvement initiatives, such as placing planters along Clay Avenue.

Linden said she is aware of the challenges, such as getting investors to be willing to spend money to bring old structures up to building codes.

“The key for Jeannette is to get new life into the buildings before they become blighted, before it becomes cost-pro- hibitive,” Linden said.

For an older community like Arnold, code enforcement is a way to “help us to clean up the city,” said Drew Carter, code enforcement administrative assistant.

The city is working with the county land bank to tackle blight, Carter said. That would open opportunities for other development.

The demolition of the dilapidated former G.C. Murphy Co. building at Second and Main streets in West Newton will be a step toward revitalizing the Main Street corridor, said Mayor Mary Popovich.

One of the challenges in revitalizing an older community’s downtown area, Popovich said, is that some property owners want market value for older buildings that have not been maintained.

The Westmoreland County Land Bank has acquired the G.C. Murphy building — an eyesore for decades that was in bankruptcy — with the intention of demolishing it. But bids to raze it were about $39,000 more than the $75,000 in available funding, said Brian Lawrence, Redevelopment Authority executive director.

He said the county will have to continue to search for money to cover the demolition costs.