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Demolition began yesterday, at long last. All I can say is: about time. I know a friend who lives just outside of Bexley (along Maryland Ave.) and this place has been absolutely nothing but trouble.
The Dispatch wrote
Troubled housing complex finally being torn down
Friday, May 25, 2007
By Mark Ferenchik
The heavy equipment has moved into the Woodland Meadows apartment complex, and the 122 buildings in the troubled development should be only a memory in five months. Public enemy No. 1 is on its way to becoming public enemy no more.
The notorious Woodland Meadows apartment complex, 52 acres of squalor, crime and misery on the East Side, soon will be part of Columbus history. The city’s contractor began demolishing the first of 122, three-story brick buildings yesterday, to the delight of nearby residents.
“That land has been so abused and mutilated with drugs, crime, murders. Now this is the final mutilation, and maybe the land can come to rest and heal,” said Dorothy Lupo, who lives in the nearby North Eastmoor neighborhood.
It says they should be all done in five months. I earnestly hope they stay on schedule.
$50 says the city puts in new “affordable housing” only to have the occupants destroy it and then it’s deja vu in another decade.
You’ll have to give me some serious odds on that one.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
By Mark Ferenchik
LaToya Ward lived in the Woodland Meadows apartment complex for three years, sometimes without heat and water.
But now she lives comfortably in a brick town house.
She feels that her 7-year-old son can now play safely outside even though she can see the rubble that used to be Woodland Meadows from the front porch of her Bexley Plaza apartment. Crews should be finished tearing down the complex’s 122 buildings sometime this fall.
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Im all about renovating the tired old low income housing, but like ndecent said, most of those folks will just not keep them up and then were back to square one in 10-15 years
it wasn’t all the occupants’ fault.
I had a conversation once with a carpenter once who worked for a cabinet maker that does work in low income housing complexes.
They would tear out the old ruined work, rebuild everything to last a while… only to be called back 6 months to a year later in more than half of the units to replace everything all over again. He had found smashed, water damaged, or just down right ruined and completely pulled apart kitchen and bathroom cabinets (and that wasn’t the only damage). He was amazed how some of these folks could show such complete disregard for the property they were renting (and in some cases could possibly own if they had a mind to).
I’m not saying this kind of behavior represented everyone who rents out low income units, I know for a fact it does not. But dag I haven’t heard of this kind of behavior anywhere else other than with some college kids on campus.
I don’t understand it and I don’t know what to do to change that kind of behavior.
This is the reason such people generally end up paying such high security deposits. That said, ARH does have a point. This wasn’t all the residents’ fault. The Bexley Plaza apartments immediately south of the old Woodland Meadows site don’t have nearly the same level of problems, and I doubt it’s because they’re so much more expensive (despite the grandiose name, they’re fairly modest). Much of the Woodland Meadows damage was damage that the residents would have had a hard time causing if they’d been trying, and was definitely beyond any tenant’s ability (or responsibility) to repair.
How much do you expect the tenants to respect the property when not even the owner does?
I have a friend who’s a floating maintenance worker for a management company that manages apartment complexes all over Columbus, including some working-class ones on the Southwest side. They have some problems with people letting carpets and showers get moldly, etc., but nowhere near the kind of problems people had at Woodland Meadows.
and i’m not saying that all people who live in low income housing respect the properties because i know that’s not the case. one of my coworkers used to be a property manager for CMHA and the stories she tells are unbelievable. but what happened there after the 2004 ice storm is completely unacceptable and shows how little jose newbury gave a shit about that place.
October 17th, 2007
I don’t see the city of Columbus giving away what could be tens of thousands of dollars in property taxes, income taxes and potential retail/light industrial/warehouse space. Also, I don’t know if the Bexley School System could absorb the kind of money it’d take to buy and develop this property strictly for athletics. Maybe a win-win partnership between the city of Bexley and the City of Columbus??
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Friday, April 11, 2008
BY ALAYNA DEMARTINI
The plans are enticing, but there’s at least one major obstacle to Bexley turning a vacant parcel in neighboring Columbus into a park: the price.
Bexley’s City Council and school board listened last night to resident after resident cite the need for more parkland, particularly athletic fields. However, no one offered specifics for how Bexley would pay for the site.
The parcel is 53 acres just east of Bexley that used to be home to the rundown, crime-ridden Woodland Meadows apartments.
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