Macon-Bibb commissioners determining how they’ll address blight

MACON, Georgia (41NBC/WMGT) – Macon-Bibb commissioners are trying to figure how they’ll use $10 million to address blight around the county.

Several have different suggestions, but they haven’t come to a final solution. 

“It’s about five or six, it goes all the way down to the fence down there,” Antonio Lewis Ross said about the blighted houses on Lynmore Avenue. 

“This is basically the epicenter of where a lot of people that I affiliate with come from and it’s sad to see it be neglected so much,” he said. 

He and several others around the neighborhood are working with the city to get rid of the problem. 

“These properties have been on the “tear down” list since 2009 & 2011. Now we’re in the process of getting these houses torn down,” Ross says. 

He says the run down houses are only a few of a much bigger problem across the county — blighted homes are everywhere. 

Commissioner Bert Bivins wrote a letter to commissioners saying “he’s convinced no revitalization of poor neighborhoods will occur unless the board does something about the problem.”

A few leaders are suggesting splitting what’s left of bond loaned to the city evenly to address blight — about a million dollars per district. 

“The focus of this discussion is going to be whether to spread the money to thin and up without being able to show anything of significance to somebody,” Mayor Robert Reichert says. 

He has another idea.

“Or do you focus it and try to have maximum impact on a smaller area, fewer impacted areas, but be able to show people and get them to say well lets do more of that,” Reichert says. 

He recommends thinking about what happens after the structures are torn down. 

“The adaptive reuse of the property is almost as important as the demolition of the blighted structure that’s currently on it,” Reichert says. 

Ross is okay with any money that will address the issue and wants to see a better neighborhood. 

“…put in a park in this area which will help increase the identity in this area and the camaraderie in this area,” Ross says. 

He says he and his group, the “South Macon Concerned Citizens,” had several meetings to figure out where blighted areas are in their neighborhoods. 

The county is looking at tearing down those houses in the next two months.