New Life to Be Breathed Into Abandoned Front Street Building

I drive by it almost every day and although I don't want to stare at the mess, my eyes are always drawn to it because there it sits, a huge building just decaying. I'm talking about the former hotel and most recently, nursing home that's sat abandoned since 2011 on Front Street.

Finally it looks like new life is about to be breathed into this eyesore. The Broome County Land Bank acquired the property from the county in March and has accepted a proposal from Newman Development Group to bring what's left of the building back to life in the form of apartments and retail space, a task I imagine will be pretty big because the building has been home to vandals and such for the last several years.

Time Warner Cable News quotes Stacey Duncan, Broome County Land Bank executive director as saying: "It's general occupancy but specifically it provides opportunities for young professionals that may want to live closer to the downtown or empty nesters or retirees that maybe want to have apartment living so it satisfies what we think is a market demand for those types of housing opportunities. You have Roberson Museum there, you have the west side neighborhoods there so you have some pretty stable neighborhoods there and our goal is to make sure we maintain through the redevelopment of 50 Front, that we maintain that stable community."

There's no word on when work will begin or how long it will take to complete, but after a developer is chosen, the Broome County Land Bank will submit an application to the Southern Tier Regional Economic Development Council to grant the project.

There's still a chance that plans could be disapproved or fall through, but I for one, am keeping my fingers crossed that renovations are allowed. It's time to bring life back into Binghamton!