An abandoned village in south Alabama will reportedly become a neighborhood for homeless veterans, breathing new life into a small community that never recovered from the industrial drain of the late 20th century.
The 22-acre Cotton Mill Village was once the beating heart of Prichard, Alabama, a Mobile suburb anchored by the shipbuilding and paper mill industries.
But decades of factory closures, poverty, job losses and unemployment engulfed the region and left it in ruins.
“It was a booming industry because of the industrial companies that were here, but when those industrial companies left, you saw the population decrease and… people started leaving,” Rodney Clements, founder of the Prosperity Community Development Council and vice president of the Veterans Corps, told Fox 10 News.
But Clements, who is leading the project, said things are about to change for the “diamond in the rough” ghost town.
There are nearly 60 homes and 86 lots in the town, Clements said. And he knows of about 2,500 veterans who need shelter.
“They want to get them out of the facilities and they definitely want to put them in single-family homes to make their lives a little easier,” Clements told the outlet.
An Alabama city has teamed up to restore a long-abandoned neighborhood that will eventually provide housing for homeless veterans. WALA/Fox10 The 22-acre tract was once home to Cotton Mill Village, where workers from the local shipbuilding and paper industries lived.WALA/Fox10
But the Prichard native said it won’t just be another development: He wants it to include parks and other features to make it a “satisfying community that really gives back,” Clements said.
And it is working with several others, including partner nonprofits and a Mobile general contractor, to restore the dilapidated homes to their former glory.
“It’s just a community effort,” said Clements, who is also a veteran.
Workers already renovated the first house, and it only took a month, according to Fox.
But it was abandoned after the area’s industrial base declined in the latter part of the 20th century. WALA/Fox10
“That first home will be a true testament to what this potential community can have to offer,” Clements said.
“We want to build and remodel the [houses] get back to what they looked like before they were damaged,” said Tyrone Pettway, general contractor on the project and CEO of Kingdome Renovations in Mobile.
“We know we’re not going to be able to do them all like this, but for the most part we will do it in as many homes as we can,” he continued.
Now workers are trying to restore dozens of homes for the more than 2,500 homeless veterans who live in the area. WALA/Fox10 They also want to include parks and other recreational areas so the community can be a “fulfilling” neighborhood. WALA/Fox10
“Let this be an example of what can happen when a community comes together and knows that there is strength in numbers and that we are better together.”
Clements said the project’s next steps will likely involve building and improving infrastructure, the cost of which will likely be around $17 million.
Similar efforts across the country have restored old residences or other buildings for use by homeless veterans, such as when volunteers restored an Ohio home slated for demolition and turned it over to a veteran earlier this year, according to News 5 Cleveland.
But it can be difficult to find restoration projects done on such a large scale.
But for Clements, it is worth the work to restore what was once a “dark, depressing, abandoned and forgotten place.”
“The city of Prichard… I was born and raised here,” Clements said. “So everything here is my home.”
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Source: vtt.edu.vn