28/08/2024
A recent editorial in the St Louis Dispatch (link below - subscription required) provides a telling headline and quotes (provided below).
Dealing with these properties is an extremely difficult issue, this is a clear example why proactive preventative measures like a VPRO are needed.
Let us help you.
In the interim, these quotes (and the entire editorial) appear to clearly demonstrate a huge wasted opportunity.
"Generally, the buildings are vacant in the first place because they’re in depopulated neighborhoods where investment is scarce. Shoring them up to prevent them from decaying further only makes sense if there’s a realistic possibility of marketing them.
Usually, there isn’t. Which means the likeliest long-term outcome — after a significant investment of public dollars — is continued vacancy and the resumption of decay."
"the city repair bills to the owners are often in the six figures, likely exceeding the entire market values of the properties. Which means the city will ultimately either have to forgive those debts or add the buildings to the city’s already brimming land bank of vacant and abandoned properties."
"Among photos with Barker’s story on the program is an especially telling one of a vacant building with a new, city-funded two-story wooden deck and staircase leading up to new brickwork — and boarded-up windows overlooking a still-overgrown abandoned lot.
What, exactly, is the plan here?"
National League of Cities United States Conference of Mayors ICMA - International City/County Management Association Center for Community Progress American Planning Association American Association of Code Enforcement
Editorial: Structural stabilization alone doesn’t address the reasons that entire neighborhoods, particularly in North St. Louis, have emptied out.
