Downtown Property Owners Form Group

Downtown property owner, Mike Williams, began conversations with Downtown PKB in early 2021 regarding the idea of a new committee, specifically designed to meet the needs of downtown property owners. Williams, the owner of iTech and Advanced Alarm Technologies, saw a need to have this resource available to downtown business owners.

The purpose of this newly formed group would be to have regularly scheduled meetings for these business owners to ask questions and be given tools and resources to help find solutions to their issues. The first formal meeting, which was an experiment in many ways, was held in October of 2021.

After a good turnout in October, we decided to continue the meetings and to invite speaking guests to each meeting to shed light on various topics centered around property ownership in downtown Parkersburg. The intended goal is for as many downtown property owners as possible to attend these meetings to network and to remain informed on issues related to their property ownership.

Lindsey Piersol, who is Downtown PKB’s board president and executive director of the Wood County Economic Development Authority, has been a wonderful resource for answering property owners’ questions, in addition to our monthly speakers. In November, Ryan Barber, the development director for the City of Parkersburg spoke and answered questions, and our December guest was Parkersburg Mayor, Tom Joyce. The January Downtown Property Owner’s Meeting will be held on January 18th at 9 a.m. at WVU-Parkersburg on Market Street. All downtown Parkersburg property owners are invited to attend. The speaker this month will be Susan Pierce from the West Virginia State Historic Preservation Officer.