RSS
Twitter
Facebook
YouTube
The Columbus Dispatch wrote
Struggle for development in Franklinton
Homes not right fit for neighborhood, leaders say
Sunday, October 28, 2007
By Mark Ferenchik
Vince Gazzara wants to build four houses in Franklinton, the poor Columbus neighborhood of century-old houses just west of Downtown that is struggling to reverse its fortunes. But he doesn’t want to build basements, garages or porches. So neighborhood leaders — as much as they want new construction — don’t want his houses.
The houses Gazzara wants to build aren’t fancy. They’re two-story, vinyl-sided homes on slabs that would sell for $75,000. Carol Stewart, who leads the Franklinton Area Commission, said she wants better.
If nothing else, this episode is another example of the difficulties of building in the city’s core, especially Franklinton, where builders couldn’t go until the massive floodwall around it was finished in 2004.
Related Stories:
- Franklinton: The new Short North?
- City hopes to make Franklinton streets safer
- City demos two more blighted homes in Franklinton
- Franklinton rehabs bring in some new life
I’ll still win out, based on the “can live pretty cheaply til I die” basis. Maybe my friends and I will be struck by evil redevelopment genius after we go there.
Well pigeon, if people like you buy up all the rehabs, civic minded, proud of your property, cleaning up the neighborhood, etc. it can only help ;)
I’ll still win out, based on the “can live pretty cheaply til I die” basis. Maybe my friends and I will be struck by evil redevelopment genius after we go there.
I’ve said it before, but I still think West Franklinton and East Franklinton are two completely different beasts. West Franklinton might look pretty bleak. East Franklinton has a lot of potential. Perhaps the development of one can improve the outlook of the other.
I guess only time will tell.
I’ll still win out, based on the “can live pretty cheaply til I die” basis. Maybe my friends and I will be struck by evil redevelopment genius after we go there.
I think you should donate your land to my central park concept. We’ll even install a plaque in your honor. :D
jk…like Core said, take care of your place, lead by example, and be a cheerleader for your neighborhood. They need some of those residents in that neck.
I’d totally live in East or West Franklinton if I could find the building I want for the right price. Since there are so many diverse areas of Columbus, I wouldn’t mind not living in a “hot” one for the right price and structure. It’s only a few minutes drive from Franklinton to the Short North, Arena District, German Village, Downtown, etc., etc……. It takes so little time to get to places around Columbus that price/structure are more important to me than location……
The problem with the CHP houses that Vince Gazzara wrote of is even worse than he states. They are not even rent to own. They are in fact, a rent them for 15 years and then you have first option to buy with a $15,000 credit towards the price that is set 15 years from now deal. We have one on our street and the tenants lasted 2 years and then split. And yes the CHP houses, as far as I have heard and seen, are almost always Section 8 voucher houses. They are also built out of Dow foam insulation board with waferboard only in the corners of the structure. Super cheap construction. CHP made $25,000 a house in the South Side for “adminstrative overhead”. The actual build costs on the houses were $95,000 each.The entire project on the South Side (32 houses) was funded by your tax dollars. As far as I’m concerned CHP is not part of a neighborhood’s solution, they just continue and promote more problems. If they were really serious about helping out neighborhoods I would think that they would rehab existing homes and help lower income people buy them, not rent them.
There seems to be a lot of sympathy here for rehabbing and not much for new builds. I wonder why that is. Simply put, the raw material (as of 2007, not when it was built) in Franklinton, at least in those parts of it I’ve seen (more east of 315 than west) is not exactly prime clay to sculpt. I’d be surprised if there weren’t a lot of internal problems with a fair number of the houses, too, making rehabbing a real chore–likely involving gutting walls, floors, and yards.
I don’t know the numbers, but my gut instinct is that demolition and new construction would be little more expensive than rehab on a lot of these properties, and you’d end up with a much superior product.
I agree on the new builds. You have a few brick rowhomes in Franklinton, but for the most part its crappy sided homes, that should be torn down anyway. This is another problem with redeveloping Franklinton in comparrison to the Eastside, there is a lack of buildings to work with. The eastside has great homes, townhomes, apt buildings, etc. they jsut needed a little work. Franlinton has a few but not very many.
As someone who is rehabbing several older (1910) homes in Hungarian Village I would agree that the east end of Franklinton has less housing worth saving. The west end near Mt. Carmel has many, many homes that could be rehabbed. Yes, a lot of them are wood sided but they also have oak floors and oak trim and really solid construction, unlike the cheaper new builds that I have seen go up in my area. I have a friend who owns 2 homes on Cambell near Mt. Carmel and they are nice older homes that just needed a little tlc. They are on the smallish side 1000-1400 square ft, but who wants to heat/cool a 4,000 ft Victorian these days?
i may be entering this conversation late but as a resident and property owner of east franklinton i agree with walker 100%. east and west franklinton are very different areas. ive lived in columbus my entire life, born and raised in victorian village and the former slums of harrison west. im very familiar with the changes and the process that took place. west franklinton is a dead ringer for what harrison westused to to be. take a look at those hideous infill homes that battelle built in the early 1980′s. there all over from 3rd north to 5th and till this day they still stick out. im a active member of the area commission in franklinton, i stand behind our decision to not be in favor of the infill homes that vince wanted to build. we dont dont cheap ugly infill homes. home again has done a great job with rehabing many homes in the west franklinton area, jim sweeny with the FDA has also done a great job as well and has 2 new homes going up as well. basements and garages and porches included..lol. city view homes is another great asset we have going on in east franklinton. the city is working on reconfiguring the low income public housing issues on mcdowell and rich. one of the concepts is to remove the towers and build 2 and 3 story structures similiar to what you will find in italian village at 1st and summit. more market rate housing and rental with a lower section 8 percentage. it can work and has worked.
as far as b + t goes, my properties border those parcels. im very active with the developer on concepts for artist lofts, studios, and performance spaces. currently they are in the midst of there phase 2 enviromental study. were hoping for mild abatements to take place as early as spring of 08. there are plans for afforable housing to be built on mcdowell and arch firms have been hired to produce concepts for that. very modern structures, very green structures. we think that this could be an area were that kind of architecture and thinking can thrive.
going back to west franklinton, residents have spent life times trying to redevelop and create hope for the neighborhood. i believe that the time is coming for that change to take place. as the surrounding areas such as the shortnorth and those neighborhoods and german village and certain parts of old town east have become more desirable and honestly expensive people will and have started to turn to the west side for an alternative. yes there will be 10 or so more years of dealing with the issues that combat change. such as crime and drugs and a growing gang problem here in the city, but if a 900 sqft condo doesnt fit your needs in downtown, then areas like this can be havens for larger housing stock and land. the home ownership rate in west franklinton is very low i know that, but if you look at areas like vic vill and places like that 30 years ago im sure you will find the same numbers. the key is to find a happy balance so that everyone can coexist. people ask me all the time about gentrification. and i want to see alot of the existing local residents stay and be a part of the community in the future. programs like home again and city view along with the franklinton development assc. make that possible. allow lower income bracket families OWN there own homes, not rent. a good mix of that with other income levels can thrive studies have shown.
alright enough of my rants. walker this site is great!!! i will continue to add comments as i can and keep it up.
chris
Hey Chris! Welcome to the site! Thanks for taking the time to share all of this info and add to the discussion! :D
Chris, welcome aboard, and from the resident Franklinton skeptic I have one question.
After viewing you profile and seeing occupation as: “general contractor”
why aren’t you building there?
p.s. Wanted to clarify, that’s not intended as hostile, it’s a real question. If I had the resources to buy land and build property, low priced housing with a 25,000.00 city paid bonus would seem attractive to me…so I’m legit curious why you aren’t doing it.
hey coremodels thanks for the reply. to answer your question i do small commercial interior remodeling and homes. im no longer a HIC licensed contractor after my last business venture i allowed it to lapse not thinking i was gonna be back in the biz, so i tend to rely on the property or business owner to pull permits if needed for jobs. i also used to own a store in the short north called counter culture. im still very involved with the store in the form of sales but im not into the day to day operation anymore. im actually getting geared up to move away from construction and start making furniture and things for the home at my work shop here in the hood. im just really tired of working on projects that end up taking longer and are more involved than anticipated. some of my more recent projects would be union cafe in the short north and in the past, axis nightclub. its jobs like that take years off your life…lol
One point that you probably did not catch – the only reason the FAC was asked for their “support” was because city funds were involved. If I bought a lot on the market [about $5,000 with the abandoned house] and did not use the city’s program, I could have built anything that met the structural requirements of the building department. All that the FAC did was to keep a poor family from buying an affordable house in their neighborhood. Also, in addition to the low $75,000 price that was made possible by the Home Again builder rebate, the low-income buyer could have qualified for a $5,000 downpayment grant and a $25,000 no-interest loan forgivable after 10 years of residing in that house. And there also was a 15 year property tax abatement. So there is no question that this was a program for affordable housing. And quite a deal at that. Qualifying meant making less than about $36,000 a year single or $64,000 family of four.
It’s kind of funny to read all of the ideas that your forum members have for Franklinton, when I know that the main requirements of the FAC chairperson are a basement and a porch big enough for a sofa. But vinyl siding, fake vinyl shutters, houses literally 5 feet apart – no problem for the FAC. So while that woman was demanding, it was not in any of the design areas that you would expect.
Basements on old city lots can be a real loser for the builder and owner. When those old houses burned down or fell down many years ago, the remains of most of them were simply pushed into the basement and covered with dirt. A few weeks ago there were fresh excavation around Grubb or Gift in East Franklinton. They had to be dig down 10 feet, all that debris and crap had to be hauled off the site, then they had to be filled with 4 feet of compacted gravel to get back up to the normal basement floor level. That’s an easy $6,000 extra over the $10,000 cost of the basement. The slab foundation requires a 16″ x 8″ footing. Mine had a 24″ x 16″ footing for my own peace of mind, to insure that it would span over any hidden voids left over from an old furnace etc. You really can’t excavate the whole lot.
Your forum members are right about vinyl siding. The butt seams always look bad, especially on the front of the house. I set up my house plan for 16′-4″ siding and then offset the side elevation a few inches so that there are no seams on the front or sides of the house.
Anyway, I am not interested in building in Franklinton now and I really have no agenda in this or any point to prove. You need a realistic starting point so that the rest of the plan can grow and housing values and home-ownership will go up. Two or three expensive houses in the middle of a bad block will not bring up the rest of the block. More likely that the new houses will look as bad as the old ones in a few years. It really needs to happen one street at a time from the fringes or in groups, especially on blocks with mostly owner-occupied homes, few rentals, and no boarded-up abandoned houses available for squatters, drug deals, etc. And those 35 new rentals- that was the last thing that they needed in an area with 70% rentals already. What a waste of the city’s money.
Today’s Franklinton bargain you could probably find room for on your credit card:
LOL…holy god…5 BR, 2 BA, 2200 sq. feet…for just over 20 grand…and it’s BRICK!
I’d hate to think what “as is” actually entails though :shock:
I’d hate to think what “as is” actually entails though :shock:
This Franklinton seems like a perfect place for someone to buy up an inventory of maybe 30 homes on one or two streets, get them to the “vanilla shell” stage with all plumbing, electricity, foundation, roof, etc. up to par then have choices for the buyers to pick wood floor stain, countertop material, paint, carpet if they want, light fixtures, etc. Custom Rehab Neighborhood…so much better than clear cutting farm land for cookie cutter developments!!!
I’d hate to think what “as is” actually entails though :shock:
This Franklinton seems like a perfect place for someone to buy up an inventory of maybe 30 homes on one or two streets, get them to the “vanilla shell” stage with all plumbing, electricity, foundation, roof, etc. up to par then have choices for the buyers to pick wood floor stain, countertop material, paint, carpet if they want, light fixtures, etc. Custom Rehab Neighborhood…so much better than clear cutting farm land for cookie cutter developments!!!
That idea Rules!
This Franklinton seems like a perfect place for someone to buy up an inventory of maybe 30 homes on one or two streets…. skreeechhh
and develop them zoned to allow live/work studios owned by artists that allw a portion to be used as store front or gallery… and where one big one, like a 3000 sq ft’r is community bought and is strictly use as a gallery/performance/art/creativity/artist-in-residence space…
er, I mean… develop them like Paducah, Ky.
And then, my friends, we are talking about a Franklinton Arts District.
And then, my friends, we are talking about a Franklinton Arts District.
I like that idea too…and thanks for the link about Paducah, Ky. I need to check it out more but from what I’ve read, I already wanna share it with the rest of FAD. We are trying to start somewhere.
When I look at that specific Franklton House (as a non-millionaire and as an artist) I would think it would be a kick-ass place for a live/work studio. Sure, I don’t know what it looks like on the inside, but since when did starving artists all of a sudden get picky? Wouldn’t it be more “indie” for an artist to buy a house like that and make it their own? I mapped out that house and it just happened to be down the street from where I was looking at the sites for future new builds. So there you go, two options. One house for the rehabber and one for me.
I would expect each person to own their own house in that plan. Artists need to benefit from their blood, sweat, and tears. Ownership does that. Leasing, I’ve painfully seen personally, does not.
Also, there’s no golden manual of Indie. It is subjective. If someone wants to go it completely alone- godspeed!
I value community and collaboration. I’ve seen what can happen when you let projects and ideas get bigger than yourself and I like it. It would be cool to see that on a neighborhood level.
But, there’s always something to be independent of… I’m staying independent of any definition of “indie” that pigeonholes me.
:D