The City of Morgantown

These stairs are at what is now known as Jack Roberts Park.  They are far away and around the corner from the parking lot and are probably seldom used.  They used to lead up to First Ward Elementary School.  The school was demolished ~15 years ago and it was transformed into a city park.  I frequently take my kids to play here but can’t help but feel a little sad every time I’m on these grounds.  A large portion of my childhood was spent here and about the only remnant that remains are these stairs.

This old yearbook photo was the only pic I could find on short notice (the stairs would have been on the right side of photo where the walkway ends).  It was a pretty plain building with enough asbestos in it to cause a lung disease or two.  It had no cafeteria or gym (every assembly had to be held in the neighboring church). When classes changed the floors creaked like 4000 people on rocking chairs. Add to that poor lighting and a never-ending set of stairs to the top floor classrooms - you have yourself a pretty horrible building.  For some reason I wouldn’t change a thing about it.  

Today, where schools are built to the size malls and have an aesthetic just slightly better than most prisons, something seems lost.  Call me grizzled beyond my years but the phrase “they don’t make ‘em like they used to” comes to mind.  Despite it’s unoriginal architecture, First Ward Elementary was full of character.  It was tucked into the middle of a beautiful, working class neighborhood.  The playground had huge maple trees throughout and contained only the most dangerous of play equipment that would never be allowed at a modern-day school.  The aforementioned qualities that made the school inconvenient and inefficient are what made it so perfect.

First Ward had outlived it purpose for housing and educating the community’s kids. Newer and bigger schools were built and the nearly 80+ year old school became an unused eyesore for the city.  Using the area for a multipurpose park for the neighborhood is probably a wise choice.  However, I remain sad that the only thing I can show my children about my life in elementary school are these stairs.

You know what Morgantown has a catastrophic lack of? Ice cream shops. I can’t tell you how often I find myself thinking that if only Morgantown had an ice cream shop, it’d be the perfect city. Oh, sure, we’ve got the Westover Dairy Queen, the downtown Dairy Queen, the downtown Coldstone, the half-downtown/half-Sabraton Dairy Castle, the Sabraton Kountry Kreme, the Suncrest Naticakes, the Suncrest Tutto Gelatto, and the Granville Sweet Frog, the Suncrest TCBY, as well as umpteen thousand fast-food establishments that each offers “ice-cream” or however it is that Frostee’s are classified, but otherwise? Nothing. 

Fortunately, Morgantown’s poised to finally add an ice-cream location that will take care of the four people that the city’s currently saturated market apparently wasn’t taking care of. I introduce Chill Berry. It will be downtown, across the street from the Coldstone, and will offer fro-yo, something that the kids are apparently desperate for. It will also have a play area out back, something that will ostensibly be the difference maker between it and Dairy Queen and Coldstone.

I will admit, at this point, that I am not an entrepreneur. My knowledge of opening and running a business is practically nil. I would assume that the owners of this place (apparently the couple that owns the wonderful Thai restaurant next door) think that this business has success written all over it. I wish them the best.

I would, however, like to briefly remember another moment in our locality’s sparkling history, one that occurred within the last ten years. It involved a bit of madness in which local developers decided it would be a good idea if there were theaters literally everywhere. So we had the mall theaters, the Target theaters, proposed theaters at the new Kroger, and the Warner Theater. Got that? There were literally proposals floating around for the Morgantown area to have something like 35-50 movie screens. 

At the time, everybody but those developers realized that this was a stupid idea, and now we live in a city where instead of having four theaters, we have two, a more reasonable number that seems to accurately reflect the local population’s needs. But the acknowledgement of the insanity of over-saturating the local market never seemed to extend past the theater calamity, such that we are a city that is constantly going overboard with whatever the new thing is, in this case, ice cream places.

Incidentally, next year you can expect that several of the places listed in the first paragraph will have closed, including something downtown, although I have a hard time believing either Dairy Queen or Coldstone will get chased from the scene. If I was a betting man, I think that TCBY isn’t long for this city and that Kountry Kreme might tank too. So be it I suppose, although I do wonder if the locals who celebrate all of these businesses that are opening will celebrate equally each of the businesses that ends up closing. Probably not. 

I went for a run in my old neighborhood the other day and ran into a gal I went to high school with walking her dog. A couple weeks ago, while buying some craft supplies, I was in line behind a couple I had known since junior high. I can’t go anywhere without seeing someone from some piece of my past. Even if I do not know you personally, it will probably not take more than 5 or 6 steps to find a mutual acquaintance. It reminds me that Morgantown is small. And while sometimes I long for the anonymity of big city-especially when running to the grocery store in my sweatpants-I love being known. I am part of a community, not a faceless number that punches in and out.

The local developers obviously have a different opinion than I do. I can’t seem to drive down any street without seeing townhouses and apartment complexes where fields and woods used to be. My old stomping grounds have been leveled to make room for carriage houses. It seems that a metropolis could be housed here. Who lives in all of these places, and where do they go? I cannot imagine that they were built to stand empty. I am not saying that all the development is bad. I love having a Target. And a Five Guys. I am glad that good restaurants have made their home here and seem to be able to stay in business.

So what are we? A biggish small town on the brink of becoming a smallish big city? Or just a town that seems to have been eaten by developers?

I hope neither.

Really more importantly, what are we hoping to be?

I would like to stay a biggish small town that has a vision of restoring the downtown area into a really vibrant area. Let’s fix up the student housing that deteriorates a bit more each year! Let’s bring in and support businesses downtown other than bars! Let’s make it important to restore buildings instead of level them or reface them! Morgantown has such a unique landscape, and I don’t want it to be mucked up anymore by more and more strip malls and housing complexes.

Take for example one of my favorite buildings downtown. The Loving Furniture Co. building on the trail. It is now owned by the Mundell Financial Group. What I love is that the new owners didn’t write their names over the old. They left it there and put their name below. Or the Esso station in Sabraton, the fast-food armpit of Morgantown I get to drive through every day on my way home. Tucked behind the McDonald’s and BB&T, a little gas station stood vacant for years. Then one day, someone bought it. They restored it to its 1950s splendor, and I love it. It is just awesome. I have seen photo shoots take place there on occasion, and more than one gathering of antique car owners. I am sure they could have leveled it and put up something else. But they chose to restore something. I like that. I want that to be the attitude we take going forward.

Morgantown has made some strides in this department-the brick work and sidewalks on High Street and the new area being built for the Farmer’s Market are awesome. But we need more. We need the vision for the town to be established so that everywhere we turn we don’t see chain stores and generic buildings. I love this biggish small town, and I would very much like to see it grow more beautiful.