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Historic Greensboro has unusual survival story
The inmates of Greene County Prison scrubbed down the woodwork today in an old log house that serves as a community center in Greensboro, and also patched latticework under a porch by the Monongahela River.
“I just love it when they come to town,” said Mary Shine, president of council in the borough that is home to just 295 residents. “They are such good workers.”
So is the handful of dedicated local residents who went to battle with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to keep the agency from demolishing riverfront houses when it built new locks and a dam, raising the water level 15 feet in the 1990s.
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The situation was dire following a major flood in 1985 that destroyed several of the homes on Water Street, eliminating 12 percent of Greensboro’s tax base, Longo said.
Five years later, the corps began relocating the dam and the process of taking the remaining houses in the flood zone through eminent domain, she said.
With resident Lydia Aston taking the lead, the downtown district was placed on the National Register of Historic Districts because of its early days as a pottery center. Potters turned local clay into blue-gray stoneware pots and jugs that were used to move goods to destinations as far away as New Orleans before the industry disappeared in the early 1900s.
The listing succeeded in preventing the corps from spending federal money to destroy historic buildings.
A settlement was later negotiated that required the corps to raise and restore five houses that were eventually deeded under a Greene County Court order to the borough. The federal.6 million to upgrade the borough’s sewer system.
“We actually saved the town,” Longo said.
The borough now rents the houses, earning agency also spent $1 about $30,000 a year, which makes up a third of its annual revenues.
“We’re probably the only borough in the United States with this much rental property,” Shine said.
She also is celebrating a more than $1 million investment using county, state and federal sources, to create a walking trail and build new sidewalks along Front Street.
Meanwhile, artists have relocated to some of the historic houses, and a private investor has turned a Victorian brick house at the water’s edge into the Captain’s Watch Bed and Breakfast. It attracts guests from around the globe, Shine said.
“The property here is cheap, peaceful,” she said. “You can sit on the porch and watch the river traffic.”
“I think the town’s been improved,” added Longo, who is well known for her milkshakes. “They’re keeping the place real nice.”
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Survival? More Like Theft of Tax Money : 6/12/2009
There's nothing "amazing" about the survival of this town. It's surviving on and benefiting from money stolen from taxpayers. The court arguments alone have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Let the Corps of Engineers raze the thing to the ground and stop the senseless waste of taxpayer dollars.
Disgusted must live in a box : 6/16/2009
You to can benefit in receiving tax dollars back in your community. Use that constructive energy of yours to build your community up - institute zoning, building codes, and other management to help your town to grow. Or do nothing, complain, and continue to watch our county waste away into the preferred place for resource grabs, waste water and hazardous waste dumping. People need to wake up to the fact that your tax dollars will go to OTHER places if we do not use them. Besides, if you were really on a TAX HUNT, lets work to get our school boards to work together and unify instead of worrying over football rivalry.
