The fenced lots below the Pacific overpass (photographed last November) are two of the vacant lots the city may get rid of.
Next week the Albany City Council will again be asked to consider disposing of four city-owned vacant lots, three of them near the Helping Hands homeless shelter and one close to the riverfront.
The council has talked about these properties before but made no decisions. The question is whether to declare the lots surplus, and if so, whether to try to sell them or to make them available for subsidized housing.
Three of the lots are near the corner of Jackson Street and Ninth Avenue. Two of them were used as the city’s designated camping sites for homeless people until that project was shut down last July.
Helping Hands would like to be given the properties. It already owns most of the houses on that block and has visions of tearing them down to build an apartment complex.
Van Vleet Meat and Food Service, across Jackson Street from two of the city lots, would like to buy the space to expand its business.
The fourth property is the nearly one-acre site the city acquired from the BNSF railroad in 2013 at 205 Madison St. N.E. The land is surrounded on three sides by the Edgewater Village development, and the developer has told the council he’d like to buy the lot and use part of it for additional parking, which might also benefit the Calapooia Brewery restaurant across the street.
DevNW, a Eugene-based builder of subsidized housing, also has expressed an interest in the Madison Street lot.
Details on the properties, including outside appraisals of their value, are available on the agenda for the city council’s meeting on March 26. That’s Wednesday night if you’re keeping track. (hh)
I took this shot of the Madison Street lot on a bike ride along the riverfront in February.
Sell them and use the money to help fix your streets, Albany.
Why not sell the lots they own near the Cumberland EVENTS CENTER for MARKET VALUE? Or do they intend to commit another real estate fiasco and violate their fiduciary responsibility AGAIN?
Feel free to waste your $ on a totally frivolous lawsuit Bill…
Why would you mention lawsuit and already claim it would be frivolous when I made no mention of one? You just outed yourself.
I’d much prefer an audit, starting with the Utilities Dept. Where did they get all the extra employee man hours for ANOTHER unsuccessful software upgrade? It took 6 months of them manning the phones, pretending everything was going smoothly before they got correct bills sent.
What are you talking about? Get some sleep
Sell Madison to local to maybe be a parking lot. There is no to some parking that area.
Sell the fenced lots to Van Fleet they can then sell to Helping Hands or whomever.
The area under the overpass on Jackson has been better since it has been fenced and left alone. The shelter is the only problem now with traffic in that area. Why keep making that area a big mess? Allowing the building of apartments will just make it trashy with traffic and people hanging around there again. Please help the shelter to move somewhere else and give the businesses there a break from the ghetto thing going on. Every time I drive to work I see something criminal happening in that area. A little bit of cash for those small lots will never cover the cost and effort wasted on police calls and clean up. Respect should also be given to the homeowners that live there.
Its owned by the government, We are the government. It should be sold to an entity that will bring in the most tax dollars. Seems pretty straight forward.