Movers rolled a new oven into this recently spiffed-up duplex on Winchester Avenue this week. A deal’s in the works to fix up four nearby homes, which neighbors say have been boarded up for over a decade. Said a woman on a nearby porch, surveying empty lots once filled with factory workers’ homes: “I would like to see the neighborhood back like it used to be.”
The woman, who would only give her first initial, E, sat on her plant-filled porch on the 500 block of Winchester Avenue, a main thoroughfare through Newhallville. Her view across the street: A brick apartment building where a cluster of people wait for the bus. Then a few lots covered in grass.
“That one was a church; they tore it down. Those were houses; they tore ‘em down. One house caught on fire; they tore that down.” The grassy stretch has been empty for 15 years, she said. E, whose father worked in an iron factory, has seen the area transform over the decades. “When people lose their jobs, they don’t have no income, they move out.”
Up the street, the 7 – 11 nightclub just shut down. E is glad for the peace. But she’d like to see some change. “It was a nice neighborhood, then a lot of crime came in. I would like to see the neighborhood back like it used to be. It was nice, you knew your neighbors, and you went out and kept the neigborhood clean.”
Recently the street has been showing some small signs of change. Habitat for Humanity just fixed up a home at one end of the block, 526 Winchester Ave. At the other end sits this squat storefront, number 552. It used to be a package store, and a candy store. It’s one of four city-owned properties the city has proposed to turn over to Neighborhood Housing Services, a non-profit affordable housing agency.
The homes would be owner-occupied, said Jim Paley, the executive director. Along with another house on West Division Street, they’re part of a “comprehensive strategy in Newhallville.” There’s been “a number of incidents” of crime there lately, he noted. “We want to see the neighborhood strengthen.” The land disposition agreements for the five properties gained City Plan Commission approval last week and now need to pass through the Board of Aldermen.
That’s good news to Shantai Brown (pictured), who lives nearby and was waiting at a bus stop with her 18 month-old son. “Seems like everything’s so shut up and fenced in and everything.” She looked across at the other corner, where a heavily graffitti-ed MGM grocery store sits boarded up. “It would be nice if there was something done to it — I know I would if I had the money.”
Up the street, neighbors couldn’t remember the last time these crumbling structures were put to use. They’re part of the package Neighborhood Housing Services is eyeing, right next door to where the Budget truck, and the movers (pictured at top) were filling another revamped home. Another house on NHS’s list is on the other side of the Budget truck. That’s a sizable chunk of the street that stands to be revived.
Nearby, on a stretch of people-filled stoops, a group of young mothers with carriages said they weren’t paying much attention to what’s boarded up or not. Keisha Brown watched a group of kids scurry down the sidewalk away from this boy in a Halloween mask.
“They’ve been abandoned too long,” she said of the nearby blight. “Kids start breaking in the windows and stuff.” Meanwhile, she stepped out of the way for a small tricycle fleet, including her daughter, who just got home from school and enjoyed a free stroller ride in front of the house.