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Timmah_1984 t1_ixvlr4v wrote

Reply to comment by Rubysdad1975 in Five houses targeted for demolition in Mount Vernon historic district by Rubysdad1975

They’re structurally compromised though. It sounds like they can’t be saved and are barely standing. Maybe with enough money and a second opinion they could be but in the mean time they do pose a risk to the neighborhood. Tearing them down might be the best option.

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Typical-Radish4317 t1_ixvvw1h wrote

Another reason why corporations/churches shouldnt be allowed to own property like this. Absurd that you can run historic properties into the ground and then go oops it must be town down for our benefit.

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BeSmarter2022 t1_ixw1144 wrote

The article says they have been trying to keep them up and have put a lot of money into them.

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Typical-Radish4317 t1_ixw1nag wrote

Lol it says 10s of thousands of dollars... For several houses over 3 decades. That's like the cost of a new ac unit per house. Your typical homeowner puts more money into their house than that

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pk10534 t1_ixxmrt8 wrote

It is also entirely possible the church didn’t have a shit ton of money laying around to pump into these buildings. Their revenue is probably some donations and the offering at their services, they’re probably not just sitting on millions of dollars to renovate and refurbish random property. This isn’t like the Catholic Church owns it

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Typical-Radish4317 t1_ixxn54r wrote

Then sell them. They had 3 decades to make that decision. Like what's the argument here? It's crazy to just sit on huge houses like this when there is a shortage of housing in that neighborhood. Some developer I'm sure would have loved to chip the houses up into multi family apartments or homes

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pk10534 t1_ixxnwv4 wrote

Okay, maybe the church is full of evil, conniving people. Or, hear me out:

The church was gifted these buildings and probably had plans or ideas for what they could do with them. Due to limited funds or declining congregation sizes, they probably realized they didn’t have the money to support that. However, it’s still property nearby that they wouldn’t be able to purchase down the road if it was in private hands, so they figured it was probably best to just keep the properties until the church had more resources, because the opportunity wouldn’t present itself again. However, the problems grew bigger and as such, got more expensive. Fast forward to today, and the church realizes it’s fruitless to keep this property but due to the condition of the buildings, it likely wouldn’t be beneficial to keep them either. So they decide they could be torn down and converted into something relatively cheap and easy to maintain, aka an outdoor plaza that requires minimal maintenance compared to aging buildings.

I’m not saying every decision the church made was amazing or that they’re strategized particularly well, but I feel as though people here are being very, very presumptuous and just immediately jumping to accuse the church of nefarious activity when it’s likely that they just made poor, if well-intentioned, choices

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Typical-Radish4317 t1_ixxoify wrote

Bro this isn't some local church strapped for cash. It has 560 parishes and 500k members. Why you defending this so hard?

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pk10534 t1_ixxpffo wrote

Because I’ve yet to hear a compelling argument from the other side. I’m supposed to believe the church wanted a garden so badly that they concocted this decades long scheme to let the buildings deteriorate that completely hinged upon getting approval to tear them down from the preservation/zoning board?

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Typical-Radish4317 t1_ixxqbl4 wrote

You do realize that is exactly what is happening all around the city right? Like this isn't a new thing. Developers have been buying up and leaving thousands of houses across the city. It's not that the church is evil they are just engaging in the same bullshit as every other scummy developer in the city. Except they are doing it in the affluent part of the city.

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pk10534 t1_ixzgfh8 wrote

You’re conflating redeveloping property into a profit-making building versus a garden. Not the same

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Guerrillaz t1_ixxifrs wrote

They put $91,000 into 5 rowhouses in the 3 decades they owned them in a neighborhood where rowhouses that are properly renovated go for $1 million+. 5 rowhouses that they got for a gift they could sell for pennys on the dollar and recoup the money they put in easily.

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kermelie t1_ixvzany wrote

This narrative that building that are standing can’t be savaged is ridiculous. You put braces up and underpin doesn’t take a world renowned developer to oversee a project like this.

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plain-rice t1_ixw3yai wrote

My understanding (an this is only from limited experience with older buildings in the city) but I think that code enforcement requires they maintain their historic features. So while it might not be unreasonable to repair the structure the historical architecture makes the cost prohibitive. There are only so many companies and skilled workers that can do this kind of work. We ran into this problem in cherry hill a few years ago with my great grandmothers house.

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bmore t1_ixwwnjw wrote

Cool, they should sell them to someone. It's a unique, historic, dense block of incredible housing that someone could absolutely profit off of redeveloping even if they have to underpin and brace.

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kermelie t1_ixyd36p wrote

Maintaining or replicating trim or wood windows on front facades have no structural effect. Just maintaining the front facade and underpinning with cinder blocks or wood framing. There’s grants for these type of projects as well.

I think residents are purposely mislead into thinking preservation is more difficult than it is to allow agencies to have discretion for demolition. If non developers knew everything could be preserved and isn’t cost prohibitive the political pressure to keep architecture would be too great to overcome.

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CaptainObvious110 t1_iy26hb8 wrote

That block loses a large chunk of it's irreplaceable historic features if those buildings aren't preserved.

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