Officials seek input on housing options in city of Bluefield

Sep. 22—BLUEFIELD — Whenever an individual or a family moves to a new community, finding a place to live is often one of the biggest challenges, so the City of Bluefield is asking its citizens for input about how to find more housing for people who want to make the Bluefield area their home.

The community is being invited to attend a meeting Thursday, Sept. 29 with city officials and representatives of Virginia Tech's Center for Housing Research.

Local people are being asked to participate and share their thoughts and ideas about housing. The meeting, which is open to the public, will start at 6 p.m. at the Bluefield High School auditorium.

Housing is an important part of the city's evolving comprehensive plan, said City Manager Cecil Marson.

"I'd say the last four or five months, the city's been working on bringing some expertise in to look at a comprehensive plan for the city. As we were going through that process, we quickly found out the biggest problem this city needs to address is some of the housing challenges we have," Marson said. "We've got a lot of homes we need to take down, a lot of dilapidated structures. The city's been pretty smart I think in the long run, buying a lot of property and setting up a municipal land bank, so I think we're in a decent spot right now. We've got folks who want to come to the area. We've got businesses coming to the area, but we've got a little bit of a housing shortage."

The city wants to address the housing needs of new families as well as students at Bluefield University and Bluefield State University. Individual homes, rental properties and town houses will be among the obtainable housing options up for discussion.

"We're looking across the whole spectrum with the best team in the business. After talking to WVU, we said we were looking at a comprehensive plan and they said 'Hey, there's a great team over at Virginia Tech that has the focused expertise,'" Marson recalled. "We said 'Hey, that's great, let's bring them to the table and come and visit us,' so on the (Sept.) 29 at 6 o'clock at Bluefield High School, we're going to bring the community together.

The city will be talking to businesses involved in housing, too, that day.

"Of course through that entire day we're bringing in experts across the board whether it's lenders at the banks, whether it's a real estate agent or some contractors and developers we have in the area," Marson said. "Folks from Princeton as well and we're also bringing in the educators because we want their perspective from the colleges; but also our high schools, primary schools, the principals, the guidance counselors just to give the housing team a full 360 picture of what our housing needs are and what our challenges are."

Many questions will have to be considered when addressing Bluefield's housing issues.

"What's our pathway to incentivize development? Do we look at the way we do building permits?" Marson asked. "Do we have to bond? Do we have to do some other sophisticated financing that would actually incentivize a developer to come in here to build homes and get homes set up?"

"We're also bringing in CASE and the Housing Authority as well to get that perspective for that type of housing and do what's best for the city," he said. "We're in a good spot with the money we have to tear down structures, but the question is what's next. Some will probably be this nice green space that we maintain, but hopefully in other spots we're getting in new housing."

A new company that is currently building a manufacturing facility along John Nash Boulevard, Omnis Building Technologies, could help improve the local housing situation. Omnis is a company that will make prefabricated homes which can be built within eight to 24 hours.

"We also have Omnis that the Economic Development Authority Board brought into the city. It's a housing company," Marson said. "It could be part of the solution, and we just have to figure out creative ways we can get the downtown to continue to improve, bring more folks here and give them a place to live."

Marson said addressing the city's housing issues will be "extremely challenging." More housing is located in Princeton and some in Bluefield, Va., but it would be better to have people coming to new businesses to live in and near the city instead of having to commute from places as far away as Blacksburg, Va. or Christiansburg, Va.

"I want to them to be here with us and be part of this community. We have to give them different options. We're dealing with a different generation. Most young people are not carpenters or electricians," Marson said. "They want a home where they can come in with their families and get things going, and not come into a house and start a ton of renovations to get things updated. Also in this period of time, it's very expensive to renovate due to the cost of lumber, labor and everything else, so it's not a cheap proposition to do renovations. We need to get a housing stock that's obtainable and folks can get their lives going and be happy."

Having a company like Omnis coming to Bluefield will help address a housing problem that's not unique to southern West Virginia, he said.

"It's a problem all over the country, trying to find housings stock; so I do believe they're a great solution to the problem and we hope that this area is a postage stamp, a bumper sticker for that type of housing and put it all over the place," Marson stated.

The public meeting Sept. 29 will be focused on housing, and it's among the other discussions planned while the comprehensive plan is being drafted.

"Now we will be tons of discussions over the next six months as far as our comprehensive plan goes. It could be zoning, it could be ordinances, it could be a discussion about kids sports, boys and girl's club, all of the athletic facilities in the area. How do we combine those? It could be talk about Christmas, Beaver-Graham Week, I mean, it's to build a full up plan for the entire city. Long term for next five years," Marson said. "Quite frankly, it's a plan that has ownership from the citizens, the entire community and for me, it's a score card, our expectations once the plan is done. As the city manager, I should be held accountable for what folks are asking me to do. It will help to give us some singularity, focus and effort to do what we need to do to improve the city."

"Housing. Single family residential. Apartments. Town homes. We'll run the gamut," he said. "Not everybody has the same needs and desires."

The city is in a good position to improve local housing.

"We're in a very good spot. Businesses are coming in. We know businesses are coming in and those folks needs places to stay," Marson said. "We want them to be here. You talk to any realtor, they're all busy and we've got folks who want to vacation here right on the Hatfield-McCoy Trail system; and we're still one of the most affordable places to live in the country, but we have to be able to provide somebody a home they can get into without significant, massive work. Some folks like that and they have the resources to do that, but that is not necessarily the norm, so we want to make sure that we cover everybody."

People who are unable to attend the Sept. 29 meeting can still share their thoughts with the city.

"They absolutely can come to city hall, drop off anything they want to bring in. My door is always open," Marson said. "There's going to be tons of discussion. This is not the last housing discussion in the city. Of course, I want the whole community there because this will help formulate the initial discussion, but there's a pathway down the road where I know the team from Virginia Tech wants to speak to a lot of the business owners big and small to get perspectives. Walmart, which employs a lot of people over in Bluefield, Va. has a perspective on their worker base. Grants (Supermarket), Cole Harley. We have businesses that employ only two or three people, but I'm sure they're extremely attuned to challenges their employees have and where they live."

Marson said having the public's input about housing in Bluefield is "critical."

"This is our golden opportunity to work with real expertise. We've worked long and hard with the planning committee in the city to find these folks because we're trying to grow the city. and we're trying to right size it. At one point we were over 35,000 people. Now we're a little under 10,000," he said.

Getting local input is important because each neighborhood has its own needs.

"This infrastructure is dated. We've got to revamp our system and get it to where it needs to be, but nobody knows a block, a street better than the resident who lives there and so we're asking them to come in and share their ideas and tell us what the needs are in their particular neighborhood," Marson said. "Because not every neighborhood is the same. Depending on where you live in Bluefield, there are different things you're looking for, and I think that helps us out, too, as we look at this plan and formulate the housing to have all these perspectives, because it's going to be a wide swath to do here together to build this out."

— Contact Greg Jordan at gjordan@bdtonline.com

Contact Greg Jordan at gjordan@bdtonline.com