Marianna Borough Council’s plan to eradicate blight continues
Courtesy of Scott Jones
Crews demolish a blighted property on Oklahoma Street in Marianna.
Paul Paterra/Observer-Reporter
A piece of equipment sits on a property that was recently demolished on Oak Street in Marianna as part of the borough’s blight remediation plan.
Paul Paterra/Observer-Reporter
An example of blighted property in Marianna on Seventh Street, as borough officials work to eliminate blight.
Paul Paterra/Observer-Reporter
Another example of blighted property in Marianna.
Courtesy of Scott Jones
The structure on Oklahoma Street begins to come down as part of Marianna Borough’s blight remediation plan.
Courtesy of Scott Jones
A vacant building on Oklahoma Street in Marianna as it was demolished as the borough works to eliminate blight.
Jeremy Berardinelli has had a goal since he joined Marianna Borough Council in 2012 – blight remediation.
During the past five years much blight remediation has taken place in the borough. Berardinelli is close to seeing this plan come to fruition with the latest round of demolition expected to be completed next week.
“We currently have 14 blighted properties that have been removed with three more to be done during this round of funding,” explained Berardinelli, council president. “We will be left with four more blighted homes to be demolished so we were able to eradicate 75% of our blight in five years.”
He added that a borough resident purchased a property and will have that house removed in the spring because it’s in such disrepair.
The initial steps in the process to deal with blighted and abandoned properties in Marianna began in 2012. With the blessing of the rest of the five-member council at the time, Berardinelli attended a blight seminar in Pittsburgh.
“We found out how to get funding for this because we had overwhelming blight,” Berardinelli explained. “The (Washington) County Redevelopment Authority also participated in that seminar, so thankfully we were ahead of the curve on this problem.”
The current council has continued the plan in a borough that, according to the 2020 census, had a population of slightly fewer than 500 people.
“We just want to get them back on the tax rolls,” Berardinelli said of the properties, adding that properties put up for sale in 2020 were a popular item for purchase. “We sold them all. They went pretty quickly. We put them out for bid for whoever wanted to buy them.”
That will be the case with the recently razed buildings on properties that are owned by the borough.
The demolition of the blighted properties was covered by $50,000 in federal Community Block Developmental Grant funding (CDBG) and $150,000 in Local Share Account funding (LSA).
“They became very big safety issues,” Berardinelli said of the vacant blighted properties. “A lot of them have been blighted since I was a kid. Safety should be paramount. It also increases the property value.”
He cited an incident in 2016 as an example of just how dangerous such dilapidated properties can become.
“A little kid almost got struck by bricks falling off a chimney,” Berardinelli recalled. “He was outside playing in his grandmother’s yard and bricks came within a few feet of him off a neighboring house.”
It eventually became one of the properties that was demolished.
Scott Jones, council vice president, recalled a similar incident on Christmas Eve 2015, when a chimney collapsed at a property adjacent to his, scattering bricks on to his yard.
“The biggest problem was when the mine closed down a couple people bought up all the properties and let them fall into disrepair,” Jones said. “That’s what kind of killed the town itself. If you looked at the name tag on a lot of the homes that were in bad shape, they’re all owned by the same people. What else can you do; you have to make the town look better.”
A fire in 1988 forever closed Marianna’s coal mine. The borough was built as a mining town for the Pittsburgh Buffalo Co. in 1907. At the time of its construction, the Marianna Mine was among the most modern and well equipped in the world. The town’s brick homes were designed to offer indoor bathrooms, fenced yards and other amenities making living conditions very attractive for the time.
The Marianna Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.
As blighted properties are fixed, steps will be taken to make sure the borough maintains its new fresh look.
“We’re going to be very strict with the ordinances going forward so people keep up with their houses,” Berardinelli said.
The council president is pleased with the progress he’s seen since joining council in 2012.
“It makes me happy,” Berardinelli said. “It was a very long process. It was a huge undertaking for us, because we’re a small municipality, but it’s something that had to be done. It’s going to eradicate most of our blight and that’s something that we’re very proud of.
“We are just very thankful the LSA program exists because projects like this would have not been completed or would have been much more difficult to complete without this funding source. We were able to make our community a safer place and get delinquent properties back on the tax rolls by selling the lots to our residents.”