East End Village collaborators celebrate start of demolition

MORGANTOWN — Vision. Collaboration.

There are 58 old houses ready to be knocked down off Richwood Avenue.

In their place may one day stand the largest private investment project in Morgantown history — but it’s going to take vision and it’s going to take a lot of people pulling together.

In fact, it already has.

Dozens stood in bright sunshine at the bottom of E. Prospect Street Thursday afternoon to celebrate the end of nearly four years of tabletop preparation and the start of the tangible transformation of 9.5 acres in the city’s core to be known as East End Village.

“We are celebrating today the demolition. We will be celebrating soon a groundbreaking,” Ron Justice said on behalf of the Monongalia County Development Authority. “The opportunity is great. The risk is large, but what the reward can be at the end outweighs it all.”

The MCDA has led the project forward and will carry the debt as the purchaser of property, but it’s doing so with the support of the city of Morgantown, Monongalia County and WVU — each of which signed onto the project in November 2020.

“The power of partnership is the power of making the possible happen,” WVU President Gordon Gee said. “The city has not always had great partnerships. It does right now … No university is more entwined and more cheek to jowl with its community than is West Virginia University and the city of Morgantown.”

With the clearing of the land, the project’s future will be largely turned over to its master developer, Dave Biafora and Biafora Holdings, along with their team, which includes Omni Associates-Architects.

Morgantown Area Partnership CEO Russ Rogerson brought that point home Thursday, handing Biafora a set of keys along with the microphone.

Biafora said most of the projects he, his brother, Rick, and his family take on turn out “better than we ever dreamed or planned.”

And though it’s a little out of character, he believes this will be no different.

“I’m not one of them optimists who say about this and that, ‘believe, believe,’” he said. “But believe this day came. These houses will be down before long and we’re going to take in ideas and believe in what’s going to be here.”

While Biafora, Rogerson, city officials and others have a vision for what the area can be tomorrow, it’s possible because James Giuliani had it first.

Starting with a lawn mower, Giuliani purchased two coin laundromats as a teenager in high school. He spent years amassing property in Morgantown, eventually collecting acres of land situated right next to downtown Morgantown and its WVU campus.

He went to Omni with a similar vision in 2014, but soon after, the winds changed — public-private partnerships became the focus of student housing and enrollment started to flag.

So, he sold the property to MCDA for $11.8 million in 2020.

“I just always knew that it was the best property in town, and as I started putting it together, it became my dream to see it redeveloped, and it will be,” Giuliani said. “It was a vision I always had. People will say what they want, but it was because of a love for my university and a love for my city.”

Author: Ben Conley, The Dominion Post

East End Village collaborators celebrate start of demolition