By Blake Deshazo | The Selma Times-Journal

The Selma Community Development Committee is working to make downtown Selma what it once was by getting buildings up to code and back into shape.

“You always want your downtown to be beautified,” said committee chairman Sam Randolph during the committee’s Thursday meeting.

According to Randolph, there are about 15 vacant buildings in downtown Selma that need major work done to them.

“As a council we are going to try to come together as a whole to try to come up with a way to treat everybody fairly and not go after anybody in particular because of who they are,” Randolph said. “A lot of buildings need to be up to code, so we’re just going to get together, and we’re going to come up with a game plan to make sure the buildings are up to code and hope that more business will come downtown.”

In order to get buildings up to code, the city’s code enforcement officers will need to make sure building owners are making the appropriate repairs to their buildings.

“We’ve just got to make sure the buildings are up to par,” Randolph said. “If a building stays idle the pipes get bad and the electricity gets bad. If [owners] keep their buildings up to code they can be great buildings to have.”

The committee wants to revitalize downtown Selma with more business, but in order to do that, buildings need to be fixed up first.

“In order for people to come back downtown, we’ve got to have some business downtown that will attract people,” Randolph said.

While improving the buildings that line the streets of downtown Selma will attract more businesses and people to the area, renovating a building is no easy task.

“It is a challenge for the building owners because these are old, old, old buildings, and that requires a lot. They need to be fixed,” said committee member Susan Keith. “We’ve had a lot of company, and we expect a lot more company coming into town. Those buildings have a real potential to either draw people in or drive them away.”

One of the committee’s ideas for getting people downtown is adding loft apartments to unused floors.

“Loft apartments would be a great benefit to downtown because that would bring more citizens downtown,” Randolph said. “If you’ve got citizens living downtown, then they are going to shop downtown.

“Loft apartments can help revitalize downtown by bringing in citizens to purchase goods and services.”

The committee also wants to start writing more grants to fund some of the renovations.

“There are some grants out there we can use to assist people in their endeavor to bring people’s buildings up to code,” Randolph said. “We need to be more aggressive in going after grants because money is not going to come to us. We’ve got to go get it.”