TAX ABATEMENT /PUBLIC INVESTMENT IN NEW HOUSING WHILE DEMOLISHING TAXPAYER’S HOMES

Submitted by Jeff Buster on Sat, 10/27/2007 - 11:37.

“Battery Park” is a multi square block development on West 72 south of  the CSX tracks just on the bluff above Edgewater park and the Shoreway.

 

Right next to Battery Park is the old Detroit neighborhood where there are numerous vacant houses.

 

While CCP crews leisurely  install new underground street light wiring on the new streets in front of empty lots on which the private developer is scheduled to build additional phases of housing, the numerous homes of the legacy taxpaying neighbor’s next door are being lost to foreclosure, abandonment, vacancy, and lack of maintenance. 

 

There’s also a little grassy “park” in the middle of the yet-un-built on blocks - and I’ll bet the City of Cleveland mows the lawn. 

 

So while the taxpayer is providing 15 year tax abatement to the developer, and CCPower is spending ratepayers money to build out the street light infrastructure,  the very citizens that have lived in the area for decades are having a very hard time…while, presumably,  the private developer is making money - and we can be certain that Keybank isn’t giving away the store.

 

The CCP crew fella’s told me that mostly Cleveland Clinic employees were buying the new homes, and that the developer was only building them as sales commitments where obtained. 

 

Rather than using the existing taxpayers’ to support the developer’s profitability, wouldn’t it make more sense and certainly be more equitable if the subsidy were provided to the citizens who already live there and have been the ones who have paid taxes and will continue to pay taxes?

 

Seems to me we’ve got the subsidies radically upside down.  The citizens who have loyally paid  for the past years to build their community should not be subsidizing private developers to build non-taxed new housing while the existing community is on hard times.

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cheap and ugly--need to whip the ugly tax on them

You know, it's bad enough when new properties are built irresponsibly at the expense of older properties--the number of new, tax-abated residential units about equals the residential vacancies, since the onset of the abatement pork chop, in the city sorry it needs to tie a pork chop around its neck to get the dogs to play with it.

 

Now, in Battery Park, come some structures that add insult to injury. From here, they look cheap, and they look ugly. We need to consider the institution of an ugly tax to offset and double up the tax abatement.

 

As evidenced by the no-net-gain in housing units, we need to stop building and absorb what we've got; rehab beats new for everybody but the banks and the developers. And, if we can't do any better than this sad manifestation at Battery Park, we as a city need to get out of the new-housing market altogether. Low standards on this new product cheapen our rich legacy.

Ugly Tax would make Cuyahoga prosperous

Great concept, Tim... I love the ugly tax. What recent projects wouldn't be taxed... we could give each Cleveland school student a free laptop with the proceeds.

Anyone like any recent work of any architects/builders in NEO?

Disrupt IT

Shoddy work

Stanford Ave in the OWB part of Ward 15 is a case in point.  Our  $15,000 in-the-hole, incompetent CDC doesn't mention this fiasco for a reason.  This project was floated by investors, who don't live here.

Aberdeen Investments--Rocky River-based for-profit.  Again, I need a camera to make my point.  Shoddy townhouses put up by a shoddy crew and abandoned with tax debt.  No presales?  I wonder why.  Could it be the paper-thin construction and moldy plywood? The whole street smells of gas.  Will there be a convenient natural gas explosion here to blow the whole mess sky high?

View Larger Map  Instant ghost town, instant blight...built through the destruction of solid and grand housing stock and built at the expense of residents like you and me.