Jun 21, 2025 By Mike Jones 6 min read

Washington County is using its remaining federal COVID relief money to remove dozens of blighted properties, whether it’s a sprawling dilapidated mall that needs to be cleared for redevelopment or a small home that has fallen into despair and is creating safety concerns in a neighborhood.

Last summer, the county commissioners set up a Blight Mitigation and Demolition fund with the help of $13 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act money that had to be earmarked by the end of 2024.

“When you’re doing economic development in Washington County, part of it is to shake off the rust of the industrial revolution,” said Commission Chairman Nick Sherman, who spearheaded the idea to use the remaining COVID relief funds for the demolition projects. “So many (businesses) have come and gone, but they still sit on great real estate parcels. … This is about driving good economic development, and some of it is to just make these towns look nicer.”

Upon setting up the fund last year, the commissioners asked every municipality in the county to submit a list of properties they thought would need to be demolished. Officials then reviewed numerous applications about which buildings should be removed using a portion of the $98 million in ARPA funds the county received in 2022 for numerous projects. So far, 45 properties have been razed, approved for demolition or are in the process of being put out for bid through the program, which has used about $7.5 million of the money earmarked for the project.

The bulk of that is the $5.9 million that the commissioners unanimously approved at Thursday’s meeting to demolish the former Washington Mall in order to redevelop the site in South Strabane Township at the intersection of Interstate 70 and 79.

But many other smaller projects have benefited as well, such as the demolition of three buildings in the 500 block of Pike Street in Chartiers Township that will cost $55,900 to raze.

“The township has been actively working on condemning those buildings and getting them demolished as an unsafe structure for several years. The property owner was reluctant to do it, and if we did it the properties would be liened,” Chartiers Township Manager Jodi Noble said. “This allows us to clean up the corner for the neighbors there and make that whole area safer without a large cost to the residents, the taxpayers and even the property owner.”

Noble said it would have taken many more years to go through the normal process of liening the properties and then trying to recoup money from the owner, who lives near Detroit and has not been responsive to the township’s requests.

The municipalities apply to the county, which reviews the submissions and decides what would be the best candidates for demolition. The commissioners then approve the projects and demolition bids, and the Redevelopment Authority of the County of Washington oversees the process from there. The program is administered similarly to grant requests using state Community Development Block Grant funds or Local Share Account gambling money, although there is less bureaucratic red tape using the blight mitigation fund.

“It runs on the same premises,” Noble said. “But for us to get it torn down, we’ve been trying (for many years) so having these funds to do it through this program are needed, and the county did it very efficiently. It made it a seamless process.”

The buildings must be condemned through court orders just like the normal process to demolish a dilapidated property. However, the property owner sometimes can retain ownership of the parcel or it can be turned over to the municipality to help recoup costs of the condemnation process. Redevelopment Authority Director Bob Griffin said blight mitigation is nothing new to his organization since they’ve been working on such projects since its inception in 1956, but the added funds means they can build on the work they’re already doing using CDBG and LSA funds, along with the county’s land bank.

“This blight mitigation program is just one part of the toolbox that we have at the Redevelopment Authority to do blight mitigation,” Griffin said. “These properties have reached the end of the road and demolition is required. It also provides an opportunity for new development and other economic opportunities. That’s the long-term goal.”

While 45 properties are currently winding their way through the blight mitigation program, another 120 have been demolished over the last five years at a cost of $2.5 million using the other funding streams. He said a typical home demolition might only cost about $12,000, but larger projects such as razing the Brownson House in Washington in order to build a new community center has been estimated at $650,000.

“Obviously, commercial buildings require a larger degree of support and funding,” Griffin said.

The project would not be successful without input from local communities suggesting which buildings should be demolished, Griffin said.

“It really starts at the municipal level. They identify priorities. It’s reviewed by the county and then approved and passed along to the Redevelopment Authority,” Griffin said.

Sherman added that some municipalities have sent in numerous applications while others never responded. He pointed to the three buildings on Pike Street in Chartiers Township that are currently being torn down, which he said will improve the heavily-traveled stretch of road in the Meadowlands that leads to the county’s fairgrounds. Other communities, such as some in the Mon Valley, could benefit from having blighted properties removed that would otherwise be too expensive using local tax dollars, he said.

Mainly, though, Sherman is hoping economic development is the main driver in removing dilapidated buildings that otherwise would continue to sit unused if not for the blight fund money. Once the ARPA funds are depleted, he hopes the county can find other revenue streams from the state to keep the program going for many years to come.

“It’s imperative for the community to get that money to get these blighted properties torn down,” Sherman said. “We want to charge forward with economic development in Washington County. … It’s not a one size fits all.”