The Charles County Commissioners approved the Hughesville Revitalization Plan last week, giving the county a blueprint for rescuing the economy of the bypassed community.
Members of the Hughesville Village Revitalization Advisory Committee (HRAC), which drafted the plan, were on hand to applaud the decision. Eleven committee members, including Dorothy M. Bowling, A. Pauleen. Brewer, Barbara A. Bridgett, Donna M. Cave, Benson Ralph Cross, Kenneth L. Dyson, Beverly A. Jarboe, David L. Kanter, Sharon A. Moore, Russell Q. Starks, and Richard K. Ward worked toward that moment for nearly three years.
But the roots of the project began earlier still.
For committee member Donna Cave, the process began when the county first proposed Hughesville for the site of the now controversial baseball stadium and entertainment complex. Hughesville residents rallied together to fight the proposition. Many people Cave met during that process became interested in the future of the village.
When the State Highway Adminstration began earnest work on the Route 5 Hughesville Bypass, it financed the formation of the HRAC, and the committee was formed from that pool of interested residents.
The HRAC’s goal was to create a direction for the village instead of allowing it to slide further into obscurity. Its efforts were driven by these community activists’ vision of a vibrant rural community with a walkable main street full of interesting shops and restaurants.
“This is a unique plan,” Commissioner Gary Hodge told The Bay Net. “We simply ratified their product.”
The Hughesville Revitalization Plan is a comprehensive design for the future of the village. It contains streetscape ideas and development zones, as well as the demographic research the committee used to formulate the plan.
Commissioners President F. Wayne Cooper pointed out the plan’s main obstacles: the lack of water and sewer services. Cooper said that it’s relatively easy to improve a streetscape, which is a matter of allocating funds. But true economic revitalization hinges on funding infrastructure capable of handling the desires of new businesses.
The village currently subsists on wells and septic systems, not the kind of service which can support new businesses in the area.
Cave said that there’s still plenty to be done while the county conducts its water and sewer feasibility study.
“You can’t just sit and wait for water and sewer,” Cave said.
Cave anticipates that once the water/sewer issue is solved, it will be difficult to keep to the limits of the plan. She said she knows of several local developers and property owners who have projects in mind for Hughesville. The next step in the process, Cave siad, is for HRAC to work with county grant writers to secure state funding for cosmetic streetscape improvements. They plan to pursue all the improvement grants they can find. HRAC will also be researching the types of businesses and projects they feel fit w