NIT – After Tuesday night’s city council vote to take on $18.75 million in general obligation bonds, our city leaders have determined that our downtown fits the criteria for “blight” as defined in Iowa code 403:
5. “Blighted area” means an area of a municipality within which the local governing body of the municipality determines that the presence of a substantial number of slum, deteriorated, or deteriorating structures; defective or inadequate street layout; faulty lot layout in relation to size, adequacy, accessibility, or usefulness; insanitary or unsafe conditions; deterioration of site or other improvements; diversity of ownership, tax or special assessment delinquency exceeding the fair value of the land; defective or unusual conditions of title; or the existence of conditions which endanger life or property by fire and other causes; or any combination of these factors; substantially impairs or arrests the sound growth of a municipality, retards the provision of housing accommodations, or constitutes an economic or social liability and is a menace to the public health, safety, or welfare in its present condition and use.
It’s been two long years since the city declared a hotel would be built here. Not a speck of dust has been moved in construction since, even though the Globe Gazette and KIMT reported ground would be broken in April of 2014.
After all the money spent in the downtown arena now they are going to spend another 18 million?? What about the historic north end?? How about spending some of this money to help fix that blight? Oh wIt the Mayor doesn’t care about the north end….Sad!
The owners of the properties on the north end have let those buildings go to crap. Why should the city pay to fix them up? The owners need to take responsibility for this. They either need to clean them up or tear them down. I don’t understand why they haven’t had nuisance charges against them. It’s long overdue.
I agree that the North end buildings are privately owned but isn’t the Marriott hotel privately owned? Isn’t the mall privately owned? These businesses will Benefit big-time from the $18 million worth of taxes used to help develop these buildings. How about you take a little bit of that money and help the local owners?
The owners of these properties have allowed them to get this bad. Maybe they do need a hand up in getting their buildings in shape, but the owners have made absolutely no effort what so ever. Why should the city help someone that isn’t even taking steps to help themselves?
I can definitely see your point and I too think the owners should have gotten some sort of nuisance fine my now. I just get tired of the council and Mayor pouring money into the downtown and letting the rest of the city go to shambles. The mall on the south side of town could use some TLC also.
You know we had a North End meeting on what needed to be done to make the North End more presentable. All the big wheels from the city were there and there were a lot of very good ideas. It was a two hour meeting and the whole time was spent on coming up with those ideas. To date there have been hardly any improvements. There are still junk cars on the streets and parked on the lawns or beside the houses. Yards are not cleaned up and even the weeds on Federal have not been attended to. In other words, they gave lip service to doing the right things and then did nothing. Most of them were easy fixes.
Ya but the fake grass in the plaza has hardly any ciggy butts on it. And that’s what really matters.
You’re right, I don’t think Eric cares at all about anything except his resume, his own house (wife’s house) and what he looks at when he drives west to State Street Deli to buy a dozen or so pastries for his breakfast. That’s why that whole area along State Street is getting this weird upgrade of less-crappy houses to replace the really crappy ones that were there before. He lives in the 500 block of East State. From there he drives west. He got sick of looking at all the po’ folk and (real) blight right outside his door. So he and Robin went in the back room to dream up this whole house moving song and dance we’ve been watching. Goofy.
I suspect the “blight” designation will just be another vehicle for private businesses to receive public economic incentives–aka slopping at the public trough–for “redevelopment”–aka known as expanding your business under the guise of improving the public’s “quality of life”.
The only improvement will be to somebody’s bottom line.
For once we agree. You simply can not trust these people. The town has deteriorated until the downtown is just like Chitcago. The slum lords and the city council have destroyed it.
I only wish downtown Mason City was like downtown Chicago, but for those citizens who find Dollar General too stressful, Mason City for the most part still functions well as a sheltered workshop of sorts for those sensitive types.
Do you mean to say after all the money spent in the downtown area it is now a blight? The rest of the city core must now be a slum. They should be put in jail for misusing our tax dollars. How can they possibly justify spending anymore money downtown?
The problem is that most of the storefronts on the plaza are privately owned, and thanks to the complete lack of any help from the mall, and any parking spaces, they just won’t cash flow. Some of them are for sale now but the prices are ridiculously high.