What was West Palm Beach like before gentrification (ie City Place)? (Jupiter: apartment complexes, crime rate)

[Banx]

Cause it sounds like it was pretty bad. Decayed buildings? Thugs on the streets? Peronsal stories/experiences? What was downtown like? Give me all the juicy stuff. Pics would awesome too.

And while were on the subject, what was in the spots of City Place and the new apartment complexes downtown before they were built? Was downtown alot different?

Just curious, thanks.

[projectmaximus]

From what I understand, if you go take a visit you can see for yourself. Cause there are areas in the immediate vicinity of City Place that have not been revived and developed. After the gentrification targeted a specific area, the adjacent land immediately shot up in value and the owners have been holding out ever since, seeking prices well above market value.

Again, this is just what I've heard...I have not seen it first hand so the info could be faulty or out-dated.

[Banx]

Originally Posted by projectmaximus

From what I understand, if you go take a visit you can see for yourself. Cause there are areas in the immediate vicinity of City Place that have not been revived and developed. After the gentrification targeted a specific area, the adjacent land immediately shot up in value and the owners have been holding out ever since, seeking prices well above market value.

Again, this is just what I've heard...I have not seen it first hand so the info could be faulty or out-dated.

Oh I'm here right now as I tipe this, just want to know what areas "not on the 'ghetto' north side" were like before gentrification. Were they all like the areas just north of City Place?

More insights from everybody are welcomed.

[projectmaximus]

Ahh, I see. Well, yeah, I know nothing more then. I've heard that's what it was like, but perhaps it was much worse.

[Tungsten_Udder]

Originally Posted by Banx

Cause it sounds like it was pretty bad. Decayed buildings? Thugs on the streets? Peronsal stories/experiences? What was downtown like? Give me all the juicy stuff. Pics would awesome too.

And while were on the subject, what was in the spots of City Place and the new apartment complexes downtown before they were built? Was downtown alot different?

Just curious, thanks.

It was just the same as West Palm Beach north of City Place now--say, around 9th Street near the railroad tracks, for example (although admittedly, it's been maybe five years since I actually went down that street to check out my old apartment), and especially on the other (west) side of the railroad tracks along Tamarind.

That means it was mostly larger, older homes, many of which had been converted into multi-family dwellings, most of which were in disrepair. The neighborhood was almost exclusively African-American (and at that time, not many Haitians, Jamaicans, etc.), and lower-income. I'd bet that many folks were on some kind of public assistance. Yards were just as much weeds as grass. There were some slightly larger, run-down apartment buildings too. Not that I was inside many of those buildings in those particular blocks, but probably a fair number of them could have been easily condemned going back some time. I know the building I lived in on 9th Street (which was an apartment building where only a guy who worked for the Welfare department and I weren't on public assistance) probably could have been condemned when I lived in it too--it had a very severe termite problem, for one.

The Dreyfoos School of the Arts was still there, but it was called Twin Lakes, and was a regular high school--that's where I went. The Harriet Himmel Theater was also still there, but it was pretty run-down looking, and bums, some drug dealers, etc. used to frequently hang out on the steps.

You could pretty much buy any drug you might want within a block or two of Twin Lakes, you could easily find a prostitute there, etc. Of course, I think both drugs and prostitution should be legal, so I don't think that the fact that you could find drugs and hookers in the neighborhood is something bad (which I'm just mentioning because there are folks who read something like that and automatically think, "See! He's saying it was bad!!").

More importantly, was it dangerous? Well, I'm sure the crime rate was much higher in those blocks then rather than now, BUT, we used to walk the blocks around the school every day (there was no fence at the school when I went there, there were no security guards trying to keep you on campus, etc.), to do things like eat lunch at nearby restaurants (Yay for Russo's Subs!), occasionally to buy, um, some of the "products" sold there, occasionally to find our way somewhere else than in school, etc. and none of us ever had any problems with anyone we encountered or did business with in that neighborhood.

My older sister also went to that school for four years, starting five years before me, and the same things are true for her (well, except I don't know if she bought products in the neighborhood very often).

Although I can't say that no one who went to Twin Lakes was ever a crime victim in that neighborhood, I never heard about any instances when me or my siblings went there, and it's not as if it was unusual for people to walk around that neighborhood while attending school.

Also, my junior high school and elementary school were more or less in the same neighborhood (the jr. high just north of Palm Beach Lakes and a bit west, and the elementary school on the west side of the tracks and just a bit north), and the same things (minus walking off campus every day, buying products, etc. in elementary school) were true of those neighborhoods.

There was probably a far greater chance of being a victim of violence inside the school, but remarkably, that didn't happen very often either, despite the fact that plenty of students carried weapons (for example, a good friend of mine came to school every day with a very large hunting knife in his boot), and there had been rumors (not sure if there was ever anything more to it than that though) of riots at the high school maybe 15 years earlier. (My sister heard that more as she was there earlier than I was.)

As a high school, Twin Lakes was a very interesting mix of middle class kids being bused in from the western suburbs (I was in that group), rednecks, kids from the ghetto, and a surprising number of rich kids from Palm Beach (they must have had very liberal parents who were big on the integration ideal). With that mix you'd think there'd be more problems than there were, but for the most part, everyone got along fine, and most people had friends from all or a number of those socio-economic groups.

Anyway, I wouldn't say that the area that's now City Place was bad, exactly, but it certainly had a lot of problems--some of which (such as the condition of the housing) probably couldn't be fixed very easily in any way except for razing the buildings and starting over.

[TriMT7]

It was a paradise! West Palm Beach of the 70s, 80s, and early 90s was a DREAM! There was NO CRIME, and absolutely very little ghetto... but NOW, well, NOW it's just a crap hole.

[Tungsten_Udder]

Originally Posted by TriMT7

It was a paradise! West Palm Beach of the 70s, 80s, and early 90s was a DREAM! There was NO CRIME, and absolutely very little ghetto... but NOW, well, NOW it's just a crap hole.

[Why is there no good laughing icon? Oh well:] LOL

[TriMT7]

In all reality though, I moved to Jupiter for college in 2000, and we went "exploring" in West Palm Beach at night..... I got seriously lost downtown on a Friday night with alllll these people milling about looking at me like I clearly did not belong and/or thinking I wanted to buy something. There's a building off of Palm Beach Lakes Blvd with a blue light on it, and it was my "beacon out of the ghetto"...... but in the intervening eight years, the area has changed so much, and now a resident of downtown, I know the area well and am never scared or uncomfortable. The area immediately around Cityplace has been stripped of all the old run down houses, leaving empty lots for future development. Hopefully the development will continue, and more young professionals move downtown.

[JMadison]

Well, let's see, In the 60's or earlier downtown WPB might have been OK, but I was born in 62, so only the vaguest memories of shopping down there. Fast forward to 1996, worked for the County Commission at 310 N. Olive.

Trust me, knocking the buildings that were there down and doing City Place may have made it look nicer, but really, what good is City Place when it's in the middle of downtown WPB? LOL!

And geez, so let's say it gets "gentrified". Don't know about the rest of you, but I don't want to pay an exorbitant price for what was once a nice place (maybe) that became a crack house and then was renovated. Just thinking about what used to be in the place, occur there, etc. precludes that for me. Do you really want your "new" master bedroom to have been the same room prostitution was occuring in or crack smoking?

You could raze it to the ground and start over, but so what? It'd still be a renovated dump. You can't un-defile something.

Perfect case study for "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure".

[Tungsten_Udder]

Originally Posted by JMadison

Do you really want your "new" master bedroom to have been the same room prostitution was occuring in or crack smoking?

Not that the buildings were the same, but even if they were, I'd have no problem with that. It's not as if I'm at all against prostitution or drug use anyway.