More great news out of Point Breeze from Ryan Briggs:
Redevelopment Authority confirmed that the agency will be auctioning off as many as 25 city-owned lots (shown on a map below) in Point Breeze, the same neighborhood where the city just a few months ago moved to seize other lots for affordable housing development, to the chagrin of some market-rate developers.
“The ‘for sale’ signs are coming in this week. … As the signs come in they will go up and the properties will go on the web this week and next,” Paul Chrystie, spokesman for the PRA and the Office of Housing and Community Development wrote in an e-mail.
So why, after sitting for years, are the lots being sold now? Apparently because of 2nd District Councilman Kenyatta Johnson. At least that’s according to his legislative aide, Steve Cobb, who says Johnson’s office pushed for the sell-off.
“There’s a high level of vacant city-owned lots in Point Breeze. We’re trying to get a system in place that is more transparent while getting them off the city’s maintenance rolls and into cash-producing properties,” said Cobb.
He blamed the “alphabet of city agencies” that own the various municipal properties for making sales so difficult in the past, and said Johnson was using his influence as a councilman to speed up the process. Johnson’s office will be pushing additional lots to the PRA for sale in the near future.
