It was sometime around 1890 that Henry G. It was definitely the most transformative project we’ve ever done.” People look at Shotgun Row now and don’t even see the houses. We basically took the worst block and helped transform it. “But with this project we were leveraging so much more than just a single building. “These houses were so far gone, people questioned why we would even want to save them,” says Allan, who spearheaded the development. The Center has completed more than 30 projects in Covington in recent years, but Shotgun Row, for which it received a state historic preservation award, might be its crown jewel. “These old buildings can have life in them, and restoring them can bring life into a community, as well.” “It gives residents hope,” says Sarah Thompson Allan, program director for the Center. The idea is that when these old properties are fixed up, public safety improves, the housing market stabilizes, and people feel optimistic about their neighborhoods. The Center was founded as a community services group back in the 1970s, but since 2006 part of the organization’s mission has been to acquire, rehabilitate, and sell derelict or seriously dilapidated historic buildings on the west side of Covington, a working-class enclave across the Ohio River from Cincinnati. “Since rehabbing these houses, things have been so much better.”įor the Center for Great Neighborhoods, it’s all part of the plan. “Without fixing them up, you wouldn’t have had this,” says Huss, gesturing to the kids scattering chicken feed across the lane. He says the revitalization of these houses-and the exterior of his own-by the nonprofit Center for Great Neighborhoods has helped spur the transformation of the entire community. What surprises Huss even more than the chickens is that those five homes next to his-now touted by Covington city planners, along with his own house, as Shotgun Row-have been completely rehabilitated, with gingerbread cornices restored new cement-board siding painted a cheery white and interiors modernized, some with hardwood floors, granite countertops, and dangling halogen lamps. One house was so leaky, recalls Huss, that someone was living out of a tent inside. Ramshackle houses, standing where the chickens now roam, were home to a notorious clan of drug dealers, and the five other wood-frame shotgun homes adjacent to the Huss residence, all in various stages of decay, accommodated an ever-changing assortment of tenants, squatters, or no one at all. “I kept to myself, but I used to have to come out and pick up rocks from the street because I didn’t want them thrown through my windows.”īack then, Orchard Street was a haven for prostitutes and gang members. He and his wife, Sue, raised their daughter here. A self-proclaimed “picker” who specializes in finding and re-selling antique lamps and lighting, Huss says he stuck it out because his house was cheap when he bought it in the early 1980s, and convenient to the interstate. “Oh, this was the worst neighborhood,” says Huss, a 69-year-old Covington native.
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