Garrettsville: Rebuilding Hope

By Drew Jones

The Village of Garrettsville, Ohio is completing its downtown streetscape rebuilding process after a fire in March 2014.

The streetscape project is apart of a $75,100 grant from the Portage County commissioners to help fix up the Main Street area where the fire destroyed 13 businesses and caused millions of dollars in damages. The project included new sidewalks, newly planted trees and new streetlights that are expected to be up within the next month.

Garrettsville Councilwomen, Becky Harrington, said the new additions are a good start in a long rebuilding process.

“The only thing we could do is what we did,” Harrington said. “We replaced the sidewalks because it was all crumbled and mangled, put some trees in that will grow and will be beautiful and eventually street lights that will look great.”

Despite the beginning effort to clean up, some village residents are skeptical on the way the village spent it’s money. Amy Crawford, who has owned a business in downtown Garrettsville for 22 years, is one of them.

“I think people are just worried about the fact they put the money in and built the sidewalks and then if they go build the buildings they may have to tear the sidewalks back up,” Crawford said. “That was the concern; it was wasting the money,” she said.

Garrettsville Mayor, Rick Patrick, says he understands the questions from citizens, but he’s hopeful the streetscape project will bring business back.

“I get that,” Patrick said on concerns from the community. “It was torn up, it looked bad, and we were able to get the money now, and it has to be used by the end of this year. So it’s either you do it, or lose it. We did it and it’s looking nice,” he said.

Now Patrick said it’s up to the property owners if they want to rebuild and the number one problem facing them is money. According to residents, the types of business that were destroyed were “mom and pop shops” that included antique, clock and a quilt stores. The fear is the stores wont be able to produce enough revenue to cover building and rent costs.

“I always get approached and asked ‘when are you going to rebuild?’,” said Patrick. “It’s not me, it’s not the village, it’s up to the property owners. My thing is, if we get something going, it will attract people. It’s going to take a lot of money though,” he said.

Councilwomen Harrington seconds Mayor Patrick.

“It’s going to be tough in this day and age,” Harrington said on rebuilding the stores. “It’s second hand shops and they just can’t afford to do it,” she said.

One of the many effects the fire had on Garrettsville was a decrease in the amount of downtown foot traffic. In a small town who’s local junior high and high school has around 700 students combined, the lack of foot traffic can hurt the villages economy.

“We’ve lost a lot of foot traffic,” said Mayor Patrick. “The shops foot traffic got people in to visit the restaurants and other places in town. Other shops wants to see something built too because they’ve lost their traffic,” he said.

Despite the fire, people of Garrettsville have remained strong. Councilwoman Harrington wants people to know that Garrettsville isn’t just a town where a fire occurred, there’s much more to it.

“It’s a great place to live, perfect for raising kids and it’s a safe community,” Harrington said.

“As far as the devastation, people think the whole town got destroyed, that’s not the case. It still was devastating to the town; it was a huge part of our history. Everyone’s doing what they can to bring it back.”

Reporter Alexa Maslowski spoke with community members about what the project means to them.