FAIRMONT – It didn’t take long for Michael Meade to run an inventory of the contents of his apartment the day after Father’s Day this past June.
“OK, that’s my bed and that’s my couch,” he said. “The other stuff I can’t tell.”
He was pointing to a pile of rubble – his pile of rubble – from the partially collapsed Fairmont Village Apartments.
The building just across from Fairmont State University on Locust Avenue was a structural casualty of a sudden and massive deluge that holiday which dropped 3 inches of rain all at once.
Rain pooling on the roof began coursing down inside.
The pressure of all that water caused a back wall to blow out, taking Meade’s apartment and others with it.
A neighboring house was also swamped. The two-unit apartment dwelling next to that one also burned, in a later fire unrelated to the meteorological event.
The three ruined properties have sat, blighted and uninhabitable, ever since.
On a Wednesday afternoon with occasional rain, Fairmont State University, the City of Fairmont and Mannington-based First Exchange Bank all said – all these months later – that they were going to do something about it.
The trio announced a partnership to make the place even more unrecognizable to Meade.
While still in the look-see phase, plans are to knock down the structures and revision the space, with proper flood mitigation measures layered in, for a development benefitting both students and the surrounding community.
“I’m thinking mixed-use,” Fairmont State President Mike Davis said during the announcement at Hardway Hall, the administration building which sits on a rise across the way from where the flooding occurred.
“Something that doesn’t shut down in the summer,” the president continued. “Our students are already talking about dining possibilities and recreation.”
Besides, he said, Locust Avenue links the campus with the city.
“This is what it means to serve as a true community partner,” Davis said.
Travis Blosser, Fairmont’s city manager, said state and federal grants could help bankroll the project. If the funding on that level falls through, he said, the project and the partnership will go on.
Under those terms, the aforementioned properties would be acquired by First Exchange Bank, once approved by the bank’s board of directors and Fairmont State’s board of governors.
“It’s an incredible success that we found a solution that doesn’t have city taxpayers footing the bill for costly demolitions,” the city manager said.
“This solution allows the university to invest money into their properties,” Blosser said.
First Exchange Bank president and CEO Clayton Rice calls it an investment and enhancement for a town with a college – that is now morphing into a college town.
“This project will bring new life and vitality to an area that is critical for the Fairmont State campus and the city in general,” he said.
