On this election day in 2024, everybody is going to be interested in how it went and won’t be looking here. So let me report on something slightly less significant.
A small old house at the corner of First Avenue and Columbus Street in Albany was vacant for five years. This week it was torn down so a manufactured house can be placed on the lot.
In July the Linn County Board of Commissioners voted 2-1 to buy the First Evangelical Church property in Albany’s Willamette Neighorhood. Today I learned that the county has changed its mind and the purchase is off.
There’s a nice little path people can use to walk or bike across the Union Pacific mainline track at Burkhart Street. Nothing much has happened there lately, as far as I know, but I thought I would show it to you anyway.
To my eyes, the Albany Evangelical Church is a handsome and important building in the Willamette Neighborhood that should last for another century or two. So I was startled the other day when I stumbled across an online real estate ad that suggested redeveloping the site.
When you’re on a bike, the quality of the road surface below your tires is something you notice. And on the evening of June 28, the hottest day in recorded history in the Willamette Valley, the newly surfaced streets in Albany’s Willamette Neighborhood caught my attention.
Code violations: How the fines got so large
On a dead-end section of Pine Street in Albany’s Willamette Neighborhood, a dilapidated dwelling boarded up since 2022 managed to accumulate a jaw-dropping $768,500 in city fines for code violations.
Tags: 329 Pine, 329 Pine St. SE, Albany code compliance, code enfocement, derelict house, foreclosure sale, junk and trash, sheriff's sale, Willamette neighborhood