By Betsy Finklea
Brittany Melvin, a business owner in Lake View, appeared before the Lake View Town Council at their last meeting to discuss forming a revitalization committee.
Melvin said there were a number of dilapidated buildings in Lake View, and she and some interested citizens would like to form a committee to address this. She said the members would include Kin Melvin, Danielle Rainwater, and Lisa and Donnie Miller.
Melvin has been successful with her own business and is thankful. Melvin had photos that she shared with everyone present of her own successful building renovation.
Melvin would like to sit down with commercial building owners and see what kinds of businesses they could put in those buildings as well as provide grant information. It would bring a monthly rent income to these building owners as well as promote economic growth in the town.
Other options could be to get a renter who would like to run a business to locate in a building or to get a local real estate agent involved to explore other options.
She noted that banks are not going to loan more than what a building is worth.
To assist in making the plan work, Melvin has connected with the Marion HMRA (Historic Marion Revitalization Association), who has been very successful in their revitalization efforts in Marion, and gotten information on how they worked with property owners.
Melvin said the goal is not to push building owners into a corner, but to help them see and explore all of their options while helping the town grow and putting money back into the pockets of the building owners. She said this would get the town looking nice and back to what it can be.
Mayor Dennis Townsend said that he is not opposed to the idea, but said they had prepared a master plan and an advisory committee was appointed to assist with carrying this out. He said part of this committee’s duties are the same as some of the things she had wanted to do and that there seems to be an overlap of objectives.
Townsend said he would like Melvin’s group to meet with the advisory committee and they would take some of the resolution from that meeting and see where they needed to go.
The advisory committee’s next scheduled meeting was April 5th.