‘Anchor project’ nearly finished

By Mallory Panuska
Times West Virginian

FAIRMONT May 16, 2008 01:40 am

— For the past two years, the Fairmont Community Development Partnership has been making efforts to revitalize Fairmont’s South Side neighborhood with the $1.8 million Traction Square project.
With the second and last phase slated for completion in about five weeks, this project will interject a series of residential and commercial structures along Fairmont Avenue.
The project will include 25 single-family residential apartment units, seven commercial offices and storefronts, plenty of on-site parking, new sidewalks and landscaping, and other decorative elements to make it aesthetically pleasing.
Charlie Fawcett, FCDP executive director, said three of the commercial spaces have been rented, with the remaining ones still up for grabs. The rented spaces so far are for an investment office, a dance studio and a Mexican restaurant.
Fawcett said the interior of the Mexican restaurant, Trebino’s, is currently being worked on and is set to contain a courtyard in front for outside dining.
Over the next several weeks, Fawcett said the FCDP and contractors Mundell & Sons will finish the restaurant and the parking lot and begin landscaping the area.
Fawcett said the project has been in the works for about the past two years and should be finished according to the original time schedule.
Fawcett said the FCDP received $165,000 in grant funds from the state economic development office to help fund the Traction Square project and raised the remainder of the funds itself.
And once Traction Square is complete, Fawcett said the partnership will begin other similar projects in the area, which the organization is already looking into.
“(Traction Square) is what we call the anchor project to kick off the South Side of Fairmont, “ Fawcett explained. “This is just our first stop. We will continue to proceed up and down the street with this. It’s a core product for us in the future.”
In addition to Traction Square, the FCDP is also still involved in an ongoing renovation project in the Maple/Ogden/Jackson Addition area.
For the past several years, the partnership has been building new houses and buying and tearing down old ones in the area and is still continuing these efforts, Fawcett said.
He added that the partnership is ensuring that neither project will suffer because of the other, and that more staff could be hired in the future so both efforts keep receiving equal attention.
E-mail Mallory Panuska at mpanuska@timeswv.com.

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