Residents hope to clean up Nelsonville’s reputation with a new comprehensive plan
By: Haley Richardson
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ATHENS, Ohio (WOUB) – Cleaning up Nelsonville’s image is a top priority for residents.
16-year-old Cala Wilson has lived in the city for seven years. While she likes living there, she acknowledges that outsiders often look down on the city.
“When people think of here, they lowkey think of like bad people and like drugs,” Wilson said.
She and others would like to change that.
Nelsonville’s reputation is one of several key issues residents said they want the city’s next comprehensive plan to address during Thursday night’s What’s Next Nelsonville open house.
Other issues included building a future for the younger generation, improving the city’s infrastructure and increasing economic development.
Wilson said she’d like to see more opportunities for hands-on learning and volunteering experiences in the city’s future.
Open house organizer Della Rucker, the principal of Wise Economy Workshop, worked on Nelsonville’s last comprehensive plan in 2005.
She says residents seem eager to put the work in to clean up the city’s image.
“It’s such a beautiful place and such amazing resources, and I was really, really honored that they asked me to come back,” she said.
In the 20 years since the last plan was made, Rucker says the city has made a lot of progress, but there’s still work to be done.
“We know that Nelsonville has incredible resources and incredible opportunities, and like a lot of Appalachian communities, people have been told that you’re not worth it for a long time,” Rucker said. “Feeling that the community deserves good things and deserves to be treated well, that’s still a nut we have to crack.”
Beach started consistently attending City Council meetings in April.
“One thing I found as a resident is I’m not learning enough; I’m not learning enough about why decisions are made or how,” Beach said.
Now, she is one of the members of the Nelsonville strategic plan steering committee, which is working to build a comprehensive plan for the city.
Since getting involved with the local government, Beach says she thinks the city’s bad reputation is exaggerated in online spaces like Facebook.
“If you’re here on a daily basis and you engage on things on a daily basis, you have positivity and hope for the future; that’s what this is tonight,” she said.
Part of the city’s reputation also stems from the several lawsuits it has been involved in concerning its government.
City Manager Fred Holmes is in charge of managing the city’s comprehensive plan. He wants the city to become a place where young people can grow up and build lives.
“You don’t necessarily have to grow up and move away. There’s lots of opportunities here,” Holmes said.
“We have so many young families coming in, and they’re interested in parks, and I think they’re interested in the reputation of the city, how outsiders perceive us,” he said.
Beach says she shares that vision for Nelsonville and wants to see the city reach its full potential.
“Nelsonville has so much, and it can be so much, and when everybody gets going in that same direction, it will be unstoppable,” Beach said.