What would you do to improve Morgantown? (Westover, War: sublets, apartments)
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I thought this would be a great place to ask everyone what they would do to Morgantown to make it a better place to live and enjoy as a home. Here a few things off the bat I wouldn't mind being improved.
1. I would have the PRT bridges painted. (a lot of the paneling is rusted out and the concrete supports could use a nice brick or stone facade.
2. The river banks could defiantly use a trim so you could actually see the water. It wouldn't hurt to put a few decorative street lamps throughout the rail trail downtown which would look nice next to the river.
3. I believe Morgantown is in great need of updated sidewalks throughout the entire city. I've never been to a place where foot traffic is so common but sidewalks are few and far between.
4. Street lamps! I don't know about anyone else but driving in the rain at night in Morgantown is a task. Not having reflectors on the roads, reflective paint or no paint at all, street lamps would surely help.
I couldnt agree more with #4........I absolutely lose my mind everytime I drive on 705 from Suncrest Town Centre to the Roundabout....its only 1/2 mile, but its technically a Highway, and its not lit even remotely....one of the dumbest things Ive ever seen.......
I know its far fetched, but Id really love to see a classic Arcade/Putt-Putt/Go Carts/Batting Cages type of Entertainment Center.....Especially the batting Cages....
The one we have in DFW is called Malibu SpeedZone, it even has Bungee Jumping, although I think its technically separate from Speedzone itself-
1: Revamp current laws and allow an indoor shooing range to be built within city.
2: Driving range with a bar attached to it so you can have a beer or two while hitting balls.
3: Arcade with put put and maybe Go Carts.
4: Indoor laser tag or paintball.
5: Number 4 from the first post definitely
6: Totally agree about painting the PRT tracks and side walls, they look so gross.
7: Expand the PRT throughout the entire area (Waterfront, Suncrest, West Run (with park and ride), UTC (with park and ride) and to Law School Hill area.
8: Build a bridge somewhere from beechurst to the new UTC exit to alleviate traffic. Maybe like someone said in another thread they could build a focal bridge that somehow goes from patteson drive to UTC exit that disturbs the arboretum as little as possible. Either pay for it with a levy or make it a fast access bridge and charge people a small fee to use it (ez pass and license plate cameras).
9: Majorly expand West Run Road and connect it to collins ferry.
10: Expand collins ferry to make it a bigger road and build a bridge from it over the river and connect into 79 with a new interchange.
11: Northern Bypass from 68 to 79 with exits to roads heading into the town (with all of those roads fixed and expanded)
12: Police patrol along the rail trail every day during hours of it being open (since we are paying a levy for more police as it is)
13: Shut Biafora and Giuliani up and somehow make it easier for the city to ignore/override and lawsuits or other challenges they try to pull.
14: Turn the warner into a beautiful redone movie theatre and maybe a draft house movie theatre.
15: Annex all of the surrounding cities into Morgantown Proper and let them be their own districts within the new Morgantown Proper (could use justification as if you are on MUB, you are part of Morgantown).
16: Build alternate route for trucks to keep them out of down town.
17: City becomes responsible for all the roads within the city since the state does not want anything to do with fixing the roads (the highway department can just write the town a check each year for morgantown taking ownership of the roads).
18: City encourage tearing down all blighted areas throughout the city and replacing them with nice looking and well built buildings, preferably around 10 stories tall where it makes sense (see immediate down town area).
19: This one might be controversial but, go block by block tearing down high street and replace with beautiful new buildings that look historic and make them 4-6 stories tall, first floor could be retail and next 1-2 stories could be office space and then the rest could be apartments. This would greatly increase the tax base downtown. If anyone has been to Frederick Maryland along cotoctin creek and seen how they tore down the old building and built beautiful new buildings that look historic, that is my vision, they did a fantastic job and it would look great on high street.
20: Fix university avenue at the mountain lair, at the curve and where it turns into a one lane road.
21: Since westover is now part of Morgantown proper, turn both side of the river into luxury areas and beautify the entire area throughout. Maybe University builds a new Residence dorm on Westover side of the bridge and then build a pedestrian bridge across the river to tie into the famous and downtown.
22: WVU tear down stansbury and build something nice there, maybe make that the new hub for the PRT mixed with a commuter building or something.
23: New upscale shopping center diagonally across from Suncrest Shopping Center and try to get, Costco and or BJ's, Homedepot, maybe another Target, Whole Foods or Wegmans (Id prefer this), maybe Trader Joes if they don't move into the gateway center, another full fledged movie theatre (maybe one with Imax), a bunch or restaurants like macaroni grill, bone fish grill, carrabas (if they start build new places again),a bucadibeppo, Maggianos, and Joes Crab Shack. Maybe a LA Fitness. Maybe a bass pro shop or small cabbelas or gander mountain if we don't get any of those over at UTC/Old Kmart. Plus other nice stores that I cannot think of right now.
24: Fiber Optic internet and TV service for the entire area.
25: Expand Mileground road the whole way to the bottom of the hill.
26: Expand airport majorly (already in the works but figured I'd mention it).
27: Attract a lot of new corporate/ regional zone offices for more professional jobs.
28: Get other home builders than Dan Ryan to come to the area and build new neighborhoods.
29: Let WVU hospitals expand as much as they want (looking at you Mon General).
30: Move football stadium out of its current location, maybe put it by the highway with a beautiful view and have the prt go right to it and have a great area around it for tailgating and have the roads be able to handle all of the traffic heading to it to make it easy for students and other game goers to get to the stadium.
31: Another parking garage or two downtown, also tear down and rebuild the one on university/beechurst across from the old shell, that place is an eyesore.
32: Maybe have somewhere on the outskirts of town where people can fly their RC planes with a little landing strip for them and a small race track for RC cars. If we got a hobby town USA in a big enough building they could have the race track inside for the cars (like they do in their Frederick MD location).
Edit:
Also. 33: Teardown and remove the coal plant down town, convert the current dam on the mon into a hydroelectric dam (whatever happened with that?) and upgrade and fix the other hydroelectric dam in town.
Also 34: Get CSX (maybe tax incentives, cheap land, etc...) to build a rail to truck station near the town, this would greatly help this area in manufacturing and other various businesses since this would allow any train goods to be taken off and put on trucks here in town and then driven anywhere via our high ways to the north, south and east. It would also spur a lot of warehouses to be put in the surrounding area to take goods from the trains to store until they are ready for the trucks. Also this would help attract manufacturers to our area since we A) have natural gas in abundance which makes manufacturing cheaper and B) if we had this rail type of facility, manufacturers would want to be near it since it would drastically cut down on the cost of shipping their goods since they could just put it on a train and have it shipped anywhere in the country, instead of having to ship it by truck to another rail facility pretty far away.
Lol I know, I was just throwing things out since the question was, what would you do to improve the area. I really like the town, some things annoy me obviously, but to be honest I cannot stand big cities, I prefer the country.
I like Morgantown for the most part. That being said, I could go for better roads, a shooting range, and more places to rent that aren't apartments or sublets.
I do understand that being a college town, number 3 may be asking a bit much, but sometimes I just want to come home after a hard days work and not hear my neighbor's TV or music blaring through my ceiling.
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