Tour of City Kicks Off Summit

HUNTINGTON — There are all kinds of locations across Huntington that illustrate the recent success the city has experienced in dealing with dilapidated property, and plenty of locations that point to work that still needs to be done.

But the last stop on a bus tour to kick off the BAD (blighted, abandoned and dilapidated) Buildings Summit on Tuesday afternoon illustrated just about everything in one location.

In the 1600 block of 9th Avenue are five houses in a row. One badly dilapidated property is slated for demolition. Another is on the city’s unsafe buildings list but was denied a demolition permit by the state Historical Society. Two more are in the process of being refurbished, and the final one is a new house built by the Huntington Area Habitat for Humanity.

“This kind of shows you all of the different tools at work in one spot,” said Christal Perry, administrator of the city’s land bank, which has been instrumental in transforming blighted property in the city over the past three years.

The summit is a gathering of representatives from 12 cities across West Virginia, including Huntington, to discuss various ways of dealing with blighted properties and the problems that come with them, ranging from diminishing real estate value to spikes in crime.

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