WELLSTON 鈥 Couches, tires, appliances, mattresses and other refuse litter the neighborhood next to Normandy High School known as Lulu Heights. It鈥檚 been that way as long as Darian Casey, 17, can remember.
鈥淚f they actually cared about it, they鈥檇 clean it up,鈥 Casey said. His middle school bus cut through the neighborhood. Trash here was part of the landscape he and his classmates saw every day.
But this trash isn鈥檛 just on private property, or in alleyways. St. 亚洲无码 County owns some 150 residential lots around Wellston, including almost 50 in Lulu Heights. And now, as Wellston tries to overcome decades of disinvestment and abandonment, some of its most neglected areas are those owned by the county. Officials, nonprofits and private owners are all urging county leaders to either clean up or sell the lots.
鈥淚t shows the kids we鈥檙e not concerned about their health and safety,鈥 said Wellston Mayor Nate Griffin, a former basketball coach at Normandy High.
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The land is technically owned by the St. 亚洲无码 County Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority, a county economic development arm run by the St. 亚洲无码 Economic Development Partnership. Partnership CEO Rodney Crim said he knows about the problem. His office simply can鈥檛 keep up.
鈥淯nfortunately, there is lots of illegal dumping that happens in the region,鈥 Crim said. 鈥淲e鈥檙e all trying to work on ways to address that with limited resources.鈥
He encouraged residents to .
More than 20 years ago, Wellston signed an agreement with the LCRA to help redevelop the downtrodden city, where almost half of the remaining 2,000 residents live below the poverty line. The LCRA has since become the de facto Wellston land bank, taking titles to abandoned, tax delinquent properties that don鈥檛 attract buyers when they move through the tax sale process.
More than a decade ago, the city had some success with LCRA lots, getting dozens of houses built through a partnership with the Wellston Community Support Association, former county economic development official Jackie Wellington said. The LCRA acquired property in Lulu Heights, hoping to assemble enough to redevelop the whole neighborhood. But the 2008 financial crisis derailed a developer who was working on the project, she said.
Just as the economy recovered, former County Executive Steve Stenger installed crony Sheila Sweeney as CEO of the Partnership, amid massive leadership turnover. Both Stenger and Sweeney were later implicated in a pay-to-play scheme.
It鈥檚 now been a couple of years since a major cleanup of Lulu Heights, Griffin said. Even then, the city and nonprofit Beyond Housing led the cleanup, not the Partnership or LCRA.
Griffin wants a new agreement.
鈥淎 lot of things have not been done with those properties 鈥 all overgrown, abandoned buildings are still up,鈥 Griffin told the LCRA board in November. 鈥淭hat plan was a disaster for our community.鈥
A new plan
Wellston and the Economic Partnership are trying to reset their relationship. Crim says a new redevelopment plan and agreement will guide the LCRA鈥檚 real estate activities in the city.
But that could be months away. The LCRA has already told nonprofit Equity Homes, which is building a new subdivision in Wellston and has revamped old school buildings, that the county wouldn鈥檛 transfer any property until the new plan is complete.
鈥淲e don鈥檛 want to do things where we鈥檙e selling individual parcels without the context of an overall plan,鈥 Crim said.
Beyond Housing, active in the Normandy School District area, has commissioned planning firm PGAV to put together a comprehensive plan for the school district area, made up of nearly two dozen tiny municipalities in north St. 亚洲无码 County. Beyond Housing CEO Chris Krehmeyer said the effort to create a vision embraced by each community is 鈥渦nheard of鈥 in Normandy, one of the most fractured areas of local governance in the region.
鈥淚鈥檓 hoping by May we鈥檒l have a product that the mayors are all pleased with 鈥 that we can collectively use to attract businesses here and show the municipalities are all working together,鈥 he said.
PGAV will create a Wellston-specific plan, funded in part by $50,000 from St. 亚洲无码 County.
County Executive Sam Page has already brought a renewed focus to Wellston, blocking a U.S. Housing and Urban Development plan to demolish public housing there and helping in the search for a developer to rehab the units. Last week, Page completely replaced the LCRA board, whose three members had been serving on expired terms since 2014 and held just a handful of meetings last year. The board鈥檚 four new members include Wellston City Councilman Samuel Shannon.
鈥淥ne of my first priorities when I took office was to focus on the development and redevelopment of Wellston, a part of the county that has struggled for decades with disinvestment,鈥 Page said in a statement after naming the new LCRA board. 鈥淲orking closely with Mayor Griffin, I鈥檓 optimistic that we are well on our way to seeing a community residents expect and deserve.鈥
Griffin thinks Wellston should be given the chance to take over the LCRA property in Wellston and lead the search for developers. If the land is transferred to the city from the county, he said, selling it could help fund the cash-strapped municipality.
鈥淭hey should consider, since they dropped the ball, giving us an opportunity to make this community thrive again,鈥 Griffin said.
Crim, the Economic Partnership chief, said a land transfer isn鈥檛 an impossibility.
鈥淭he plan will dictate what the execution steps are,鈥 Crim said. 鈥淟et鈥檚 get the plan done and let the plan reflect what the mayor of Wellston wants to accomplish.鈥
For the few residents who remain in Lulu Heights, action can鈥檛 come soon enough.
Chistine Harshaw has lived on Ludwig Avenue for over 20 years and has watched the dumping become ever more brazen in the last five years, with trucks emptying huge piles of garbage on vacant lots daily. She and her husband snap pictures of license plates. They make calls to police and Wellston City Hall.
Nothing happens, she said.
鈥淥ur neighborhood is not a neighborhood,鈥 Harshaw said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 the city dump.鈥