Between Cook and Ivy on Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. is the site of the demolished warehouse that was a toxic-cleanup site over the course of many years. The initial cleanup itself was over $1million public tax dollars and the later purchase, demolition and all of the thousands of staff hours in between had to total well over another million. So, don't you think the public (us) has a stake in preserving some slice of our investment in this property? The property owner was not forced to take any responsibility for the poisoning of this site and the huge risk that he put the neighborhood in -- public money was spent the whole way. PDC owns it and their usual process is to sell the property to a developer with a lot of financial incentives (more of our $$) in the package.
I'd like to propose that at least a portion of the property be placed into land trust -- this preserves long-term affordability for successive users -- be they commercial or residential owners. To make that happen PDC would have to be convinced (1) that this is a valid idea and (2) that there are people interested in pursuing this through the development process (in tandem with the main developer is one possibility). Anyone interested in creating a co-housing site? a local African-American history resouce and community space? an art co-op? Ths could happen...........