Divine mission gives way to blighted streets in Vine City and English Avenue (Atlanta: real estate)

[Gulch]

Churches' redevelopment efforts leave legacy of blight | www.myajc.com

Church leaders saw real estate as the path to a divine mission. The battered streets that surrounded them needed redemption.

Vine City and English Avenue — once havens for the city’s black middle class — by the mid-1980s were succumbing to poverty and drugs. So powerful churches there created nonprofits, bought property and drew up plans to make the two square-mile area just west of downtown as safe and prosperous as it was a generation before.

The city and its redevelopment authority gave their blessing, bankrolling many of their projects.

More than two decades of work yielded some successes. But when the nonprofits’ grandest plans fell apart, hazardous conditions took hold. That’s left a legacy of blighted properties, unpaid taxes and code enforcement complaints as troubling as that created by the worst real estate profiteers.
The city enabled these failures by placating political factions instead of taking responsibility for helping to transform the shattered neighborhoods, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution found. Officials granted funds to nonprofits they knew had histories of financial disarray and botched developments. Then they stood back while these nonprofits used the money on pet projects. By the time the city tried to fix nonprofits’ blunders, it was often too late.

An empty lot lies where the city spent at least $400,000 in federal funds for townhomes. Bare foundations and construction debris mark where the development authority allocated $1.3 million for more housing down the street. One building constructed with a city agency grant is only four years old, yet its windows are broken and graffiti scars its walls.

Projects also fell victim to ego clashes and bungled planning by leaders of the redevelopment efforts, the AJC found. Rivalries seemed to be more important than revitalization, said residents and neighborhood advocates.

[Tryska]

"The Rev. Anthony Motley, pastor of Lindsay Street Baptist Church and founder of English Avenue CDC, has a more blunt assessment of the failures.




“We didn’t know what the crap we were doing,” Motley said.

[HH82]

Originally Posted by Tryska

"The Rev. Anthony Motley, pastor of Lindsay Street Baptist Church and founder of English Avenue CDC, has a more blunt assessment of the failures.




“We didn’t know what the crap we were doing,” Motley said.

Nice to see some brutal honesty about the problems there. If all the leaders in the community, religious, political, or otherwise, would admit to their mistakes, it would be easier to move on and get something done. Everybody's more interested in covering their own backsides and digging in their heels than offering culpability for their past failures.

[joey86]

They should have had an agreement that if the churches failed at getting anything built the city would their money back, or the property.



"An empty lot lies where the city spent at least $400,000 in federal funds for townhomes. Bare foundations and construction debris mark where the development authority allocated $1.3 million for more housing down the street. One building constructed with a city agency grant is only four years old, yet its windows are broken and graffiti scars its walls."

[joey86]

Originally Posted by Tryska

“We didn’t know what the crap we were doing,” Motley said.

That is a very honest explanation.

[tikigod311]

So is this fraud or negligence? Where is the money? It needs to come back, with penalty. These type of actions shouldn't just be written off. I'm afraid they likely will. I get the sneaking suspicion these people have friends in city hall.

Some of these folks need to go to jail. They squandered, probably intentionally, what could help a part of town that is in desperate need. These church organizations some of their employees, and the city are responsible for the current condition of the neighborhood.

[residinghere2007]

As someone who owns property in the neighborhood and who knows of all of these CDCs I will honestly say, they really don't know what they are doing.

I will also honestly say that what tikigod said above is true, they are all connected and are friends at city hall and Invest Atlanta/ADA which is why they keep giving these investors money.

What would make greater sense would be to partner with the Atlanta Housing Authority to create affordable housing in the area, an organization with a solid reputation for redevelopment. They still own the Herndon Home site adjacent to GWCC parking lots and which is considered a part of the English Avenue neighborhood.

And FWIW, Invest Atlanta/ADA does not do compliance on their projects to ensure that goals and steps are being met. I worked with housing authorities and reputable development corporations in metro Atlanta and what they have moreso than all of these community development agencies and authorities is a mandate by the federal government to do compliance and have an adequate pay application in place. You don't just give people millions of dollars and hope they will do something. You give them a small amount of the total award up front, you set up a schedule and deliverables list for them to complete and you visit them and ensure they are meeting their goals as outlined and pay them on schedule.

The city is VERY mismanaged in this area and it was a frustrating thing to try to encourage proper development in the areas of Vine City and English Ave. And FWIW, I don't think the church folk are bad folks nor do I think they were out to commit fraud and I do believe like the reverend said - they were over their heads and didn't know what they were doing. It was up to the granting agency - the City and its instrumentality - Invest Atlanta/ADA to ensure that the people/organizations who received the funds had the necessary experience and resources in place to complete their projects. They could have easily done, what I and my co-workers have done in similar situations - suggest that the church CDCs partner with a major developer who has the experience necessary to achieve the development goals in regards to economic improvement and deconcentration of poverty. It was Invest Atlanta/ADA's responsibility to also ensure that the planned developments were feasible in the neighborhoods. That retail spot (on Magnolia) was a really stupid idea IMO in Vine City being that it is not a major thoroughfare and there is a Walmart down the street. Who would give them money to build a retail strip in the middle of the neighborhood like that - it was a bad decision on the part of the grantor.

The Elm Street Townhomes were a bad idea - who is going to spend $250K to live in the hood? Nobody. You can go down to S. Fulton or just west to Cobb County and get a bigger house or a town house for half the price (or less) and not be in the hood. If I were on the granting agency's board, I would not have approved either of those projects or others that have come before them.

But FWIW, I do think that this article is kind of fishy. At some meetings I went to last year regarding the community benefits initiatives you could tell that certain city council members were upset at some of the people mentioned in this article and others like myself who pointed out what I said above - that basically the city and Invest Atlanta/ADA are at fault for the loss of millions of dollars in these neighborhoods. They should have vetted their intended grantors more effectively and that they should bring AHA to the table to revitalize Herndon in anticipation of the stadium getting built and an effort to transform the Northside Drive corridor. A lot of heat went back and forth between the groups and to me, as a political outsider, I could tell there was bad blood between the parties and the neighborhoods. Neighborhood residents, including members of the churches mentioned and who know of the failed development efforts and the blight on properties owned by these organizations, have been pretty good this past year putting the city through the ringer on issues relating to building the new Falcons Stadium, the connectivity of MLK Blvd and its cut off from downtown, and community benefits initiatives. This article makes me think that AJC was tipped off and fed a good story in order to shut people up by city or Invest Atlanta officials.

[residinghere2007]

Originally Posted by HH82

Nice to see some brutal honesty about the problems there. If all the leaders in the community, religious, political, or otherwise, would admit to their mistakes, it would be easier to move on and get something done. Everybody's more interested in covering their own backsides and digging in their heels than offering culpability for their past failures.

Actually those organizations take full responsibility and they do make concessions. But no one has any reputable ideas and the churches seem now to be afraid of investing more time and effort into something that has not been profitable and really has not had any positive impact on the community.

The best thing to do IMO is to find a real investor and developer and let them develop it while maintaining a minority investment. This is what AHA did when they built all the "Villages" locations like "Villages of East Lake" and Carver and Castleberry all of which have been pretty profitable and beneficial for the agency. The property management company/developer is the majority owner but the housing authority still gets money from the deal to reinvest in new community building initiatives. The CDCs could do the same. A lot of them are worried about displacing people but unfortunately people will have to be displaced if you want to see change come to the area. They (the CDCs) are also like the city in that they want to please everyone in these neighborhoods due to the past failed initiatives that have soured many of the residents. I don't think poorly of th e city officials either, but someone has to make a decision, do the compliance and get it done and know that it is okay that not everyone agrees with what you do. If anything, they should take a page out of Arthur Blank's book. He wanted his stadium, he knew it would be a sour idea for many, but he did it anyway along with helping these affected neighborhoods even as many in the neighborhoods didn't like what he was doing. But when you want to get something done, you do it and do the best you can in a way that is patterned after similar successful endeavors instead of trying to please everyone and doing everything for everybody but not really getting anything done.