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The city of Altoona will be doing itself a great service when it assembles its proposed inventory of vacant commercial buildings that officials believe are good candidates for rehabilitation and redevelopment.
Such structures are potential golden eggs not only for the tax rolls, if they can become home to healthy business enterprises, but also vehicles for getting Altoona noticed by additional businesses that might be seeking a home --entities from who-knows-where.
Altoona is a beautiful city with many amenities.
What it needs at all times is a comprehensive library of strategies for delivering a well-crafted message about what is available here and how easy it can be to become part of what makes the city a great opportunity.
There never can be enough reaching-out to others but, beyond that, having a firm handle on what potential sites are available almost immediately -- with a presentation available for showcasing each one -- can make the difference between getting a signature on a dotted line quickly or watching the interested party take its search to some other place and never returning.
As communities are aware, there is no shortage of competition for any entity engaged in a search related to relocation or expansion.
And, the more aggressive that a community can be in selling its assets, the better the chance that an enterprise will recognize the benefits of planting its roots there. By there we mean here.
This is not meant to suggest that local officials have been lackadaisical on the issue in question. Rather, the goal of this editorial is merely to point out that past efforts aimed at marketing vacant commercial buildings have not gone far enough, for whatever reason.
What is encouraging now, though, is that local officials seem pointed in the right direction, in terms of what needs to be done regarding the vacant buildings, going forward.
Beyond the vacant buildings that are at the heart of the inventory idea, officials will need to make decisions regarding certain properties that the city owns, some of which have already attracted interest from potential buyers.
City Manager Omar Strohm told city council members that a formal process is needed for selling real estate parcels that the municipality owns -- to help ensure that the city's interests are protected.
There has been a considerable amount of discussion over the past several years regarding elimination of blight within the city's borders. What is being discussed now is a logical companion step.
Fortunately for the city, the Altoona Blair County Development Corp. already has a partial list of the buildings that the city wants on its list -- a situation that should make the city's task easier.
Altoona is not alone on the vacant-commercial-buildings front; most communities can refer to some that they believe could be made to come to life again through renovation.
In this instance, Altoona has planted the seed for a great opportunity.
Hopefully, the harvest will be great as well.