Redevelopment authority director to retire
WAYNESBURG – Greene County Redevelopment Authority accepted the resignation Monday of its executive director David Mirkovich.
Mirkovich plans to retire and will stay on with the authority until March 31 to assist his replacement.
“He’s done an excellent job, and I would like to see him stay,” Marcia Sonneborn, chairman of the authority board, said. “He’s put in motion a lot of good projects, and I would have liked to see them moved further along before we had to find a new director.”
Mirkovich served as the authority’s executive director since May 2012 and was the first full-time director hired by the authority after it was reactivated in 2009. He also remained the authority’s only employee.
The authority earlier established as its primary focus on improving housing and addressing the county’s housing shortage and Mirkovich developed a housing program and obtained grant money to fund it.
The authority, under Mirkovich, received two competitive grants from the Pennsylvania Housing Affordability and Rehabilitation Enhancement Act program, for a total of $846,000, to fund a project aimed at addressing blighted properties.
The grant money, plus contributions from the county and municipalities, are being used to rehabilitate vacant and dilapidated houses and to demolish houses that are too far gone to provide lots for new home construction.
Under the program, the authority, so far, rehabilitated one house in Bobtown using an inmate work crew from the state Correctional Institution at Greene for labor. The house, which was on the tax rolls for a number of years, was recently sold.
It also demolished two blighted houses in Waynesburg, obtained four lots on which it intends to construct new modular homes and demolished two dilapidated houses in Jefferson to provide land on which the nonprofit Accessible Dreams will construct a two-story, four-unit apartment building.
“I enjoy what I’m doing here, though there is always a lot more that needs to be accomplished,” Mirkovich said.
He said he does feel good, however, about what he will leave the next authority director. The next director will have a housing program in place to execute and about $1 million in the bank to continue the effort, he said.
Mirkovich, 58, of Waynesburg retired from BNY Mellon, where he was a managing director, prior to coming to the authority. He said he plans to spend more time with his wife as well as visiting his three grown children.