HGTV Hometown Takeover Video Submission by Beattyville, KY

HGTV "Help us bring back our town"! This video was submitted Feb 7, 2020 to the HGTV Hometown Takeover contest. It is a message that educates the audience about our community, our heart, and our perservence. Thank you to everyone who helped in the making of this video on such short notice. You are the ones who made it possible. #HGTV  #beattyville
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About: The City of Beattyville, KY has faced many challenges over the last few years having lost jobs and industry. But as a result of that, our community has come together to refocus on our strengths and look at new and inventive ways to grow our community through technology, tourism and small business. Our community has been labeled, by some National Media Outlets, as one of the poorest towns in America, but we are rich in many ways; rich in community, rich in history, and rich in natural beauty. Beattyville’s unique location, in scenic Eastern Kentucky, at the confluence of the Kentucky River, near high sandstone cliff lines that attract tourists and World Class rock climbers, offers opportunity without measure. Boasting a small town atmosphere with rich cultural and historic roots, we are known as the birthplace of the Kentucky River. With recreation and the natural landscape of our community representing strong community assets, tourism readily arises as a suitable economic development approach. Locally-owned small businesses could attract a tremendous number of visitors to Beattyville. Therefore, community leaders envision great benefits from encouraging entrepreneurship in the private sector, especially in the area of tourism. With advancing technology and a global market made possible by the internet, businesses related to recreation and tourism could also lay the foundation for economic growth. Rock climbers need camping supplies, lodging, and equipment. People using outdoor recreation trails for riding ATVs, mountain biking, horseback riding, or hiking would also need supplies, equipment, food, and lodging. Boating and restaurant businesses have great opportunity as the Kentucky River is developed for boating and fishing. Beattyville needs venues for starting small businesses such as these. Having an incubator for entrepreneurs to test the sustainability of their company would help to initiate growth in small business development. Our Main Street is made up mostly of locally-owned small businesses, some of them being there for more than 50 years. A recent inventory of our Main Street buildings showed we currently have 18 empty buildings in our Main Street district, 10 of which are assessed by the Lee County Property Valuation Administrator as “poor” condition. The brownfield site is a large stone building built in 1939 by the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The WPA was an ambitious employment and infrastructure program President Roosevelt created in 1935, during the bleakest years of the Great Depression. The blight from this building has a negative economic impact, it hides the scenic landscape and detracts from tourism growth. Concern over contamination discourages redevelopment of this and the empty commercial space next to it. Remediating hazardous material from this site will remove this threat from the environment and impediment to redevelopment.  Site cleanup will lead to redevelopment and create a new tourist related business and create new jobs. The clean up will contribute to a healthier community.  Our community lacks the resources needed to address the issues with this blighted building. Renovating and leasing this building to a tourist based business would produce revenue, create jobs and eliminate blight from the property. Assistance provided through HGTV Hometown Takeover, would provide much needed resources to bring this property and other Main Street properties, back into productive reuse.