West Huntington is poised to become an inviting place for today’s creative community to share goods and services with visitors from across the region and beyond. The River-to-Rail Initiative has been working for the past three years to launch a Main Street America program that will create an institution for continuous community and economic development in West Huntington, RenewAll Inc. was launched in 2020 to become the champion of this masterplan for 14STW and leverage the Main Street America approach with a focus on preservation and revitalization. The recommendations include giving identity to the district core, connecting to satellite activity hubs for tourism and neighborhood services, celebrating a culture of making and arts in the community, improving infrastructures such as sidewalks and green spaces, and marketing at various scales to increase effectiveness.
RenewAll’s work serves this mission and creates distinct public benefits, including improving neighborhood livability factors and ecosystems for economic development, providing individuals with outlets for creativity and pathways to participate, developing community leadership, and creating social connections. The services and activities build networks to generate and convert social capital into many new kinds of resources. RenewAll is positioned as a community development corporation with community-driven real estate projects and a concentration on bringing new creative and cultural entrepreneurs to invest their time and talents into the neighborhood. RenewAll also hosts a variety of community service projects such as beautification projects, graffiti removal, public art projects, and litter pickups.
Our organization is located within the heart of the West Huntington neighborhood called Central City. RenewAll, Inc. leads the movement to strengthen the West Huntington Neighborhood and Central City commercial district through preserving history, promoting arts and cultural tourism, coordinating events and programming, and welcoming new businesses and economic opportunities.
Our mission serves the neighborhood development strategy in alignment with the City of Huntington's master plans for the area.
If you'd like to start a new business in Central City, you can contact us to learn about the community and resources to help you get started.
If you want to give back to the community, contact us to participate in beautification projects and other volunteer opportunities.
To learn more about why we call the district Central City, check out our Central City Museum.
Founded in 2019A strong history of grassroots engagement exists in the West Huntington neighborhood, especially on 14STW. Beginning in the 1980s the family descendants of the entrepreneurs who made Central City a prosperous industrial town formed the Old Central City Association to preserve its history and promote collaboration. Soon after the City of Huntington invested urban renewal funds to create the Central City Market Building and Old Central City Park and Gazebo. The Old Central City Association, created by the small businesses and descendants of Central City’s founders, built a reputation for the street to be known as the Antiques Capital of WV, with an antique store in almost every building. As time went on, these community champions began aging, and the need for new involvement in district leadership became urgent. The profile of the neighborhood began to decline, and home ownership decreased as crime and blight became all too prevalent.
In 2012, Mayor Steve Williams gathered a multi-stakeholder task force known as the River to Rail Initiative. This included community nonprofits, churches, business owners, residents, city departments, law enforcement, and elected leaders. The River to Rail Initiative piloted many approaches for the city and the neighborhood-focused strategy led to the creation of the Huntington Innovation Plan (HIP). The plan was entered into a national competition where the strength of community engagement won the City of Huntington a $3M cash prize from Frontier Communications and other partners. The City targeted code violations and began an aggressive demolition campaign to address blight while law enforcement coordination from the federal to local level came together to fight drug trafficking. The River to Rail Initiative chose to pursue a Main Street America program model and applied for a National Endowment of the Arts Our Town Grant for a community plan. Volunteers planted flowers, picked up litter, and participated in community planning activities. Many of the core members remain trusted advisors and stakeholders in the work of RenewAll today!
