Huntington, West Virginia
By Jim Hunt for the News and Journal
I’ve been watching the transformation of Huntington, West Virginia for several years and
the city is well on its way to becoming a tourism attraction and a business center for our
state. A few years ago, Huntington was better known as the center of the opioid crisis
with overdoses being a daily occurrence. The aging downtown was filled with empty
storefronts and deteriorating infrastructure and not much good news on the horizon.
Huntington sits along the Ohio River and the terrain is mostly flat with wide streets and
many tall buildings.
My first visit to Huntington was back in 1967 when I played basketball for Notre Dame High School in the West Virginia Catholic Basketball Tournament, which was held annually in Huntington.
Marshall University is located in Huntington, and it has a beautiful campus that is very
walkable and filled with trees and flowers. The campus has beautiful brick walls that
gives it the iconic look of a New England college. Enrollment is about 11,000
undergraduate and graduate students with about 80% of the student body coming from
within West Virginia.
In the heart of the campus is the Memorial Fountain that serves as
a visible reminder of the 1970 plane crash that took the lives of 75 players, coaches and
fans. The plane crash was the subject of the 2006 Warner Bros. film about the tragedy
and the efforts of the community and school to recover from the disaster. It was titled
“We Are Marshall” and exposed the world to the heartfelt story.
A key figure in the revitalization of the City of Huntington has been three-term Mayor
Steve Williams. First elected in 2012 and reelected in 2016 and 2020, Mayor Williams
has worked tirelessly to address the opioid crisis and attract investment in the city by
both business and government funding.
Under Williams’ leadership, Huntington was named the $3 million grand prize winner of the America’s Best Communities competition in April 2017 for a comprehensive plan to transform Huntington into the economic gateway of the Appalachian region. The nationwide contest was sponsored by Frontier Communications and aimed to spur economic development in small communities.
I had the opportunity to attend the West Virginia Municipal League Conference recently held in
Huntington and was honored to present the league’s James C. Hunt Lifetime
Achievement Award to Mayor Steve Williams.
The streets of Huntington’s downtown feature a vibrant business community with public
art and revitalized buildings. Each street corner has huge flowerpots with overflowing
flowers and the parking garages have cascading flowers on each floor. A program to
install fiberglass statues which were painted by West Virginia artists are throughout the
downtown and I was happy to see a statue by a central West Virginia artist in a
prominent spot on 3 rd Avenue.
Mrs. Dianna Maxwell painted a color quilt pattern on a figure of a deer. I got to speak with her and learned that she has painted two figures over the past five years. Her previous art was a colorful steamboat.
Huntington has made the difficult journey from hitting rock bottom to climbing into the world of Amazing cities! Congratulations to all involved.