R2023-121 Resolution Authorizing the City Manager to Negotiate Terms and Execute an Agreement between the City of Decatur and Old King's Orchard Community Center for an Urban Ag Project and Community Services

Home Browse Search

June 1, 2023 TO: Mayor Julie Moore Wolfe & Members of the Decatur City Council j FROM: Scot Wrighton, City Manager RE: DCEO GRANT-DG230094 (Community Development &Violence Prevention), & Agreement with Good Samaritan Inn for a Workforce/Urban Ag Project, & Agreement with Old Kings Orchard Community Center for Urban Ag and Program Recreation site [Agenda Items 8, 9 & 10] A key part of the city's neighborhood revitalization initiative is the creation of 'catalyst' projects in urban core neighborhoods. These are large, visible projects that rehabilitate or repurpose properties on a large enough scale that they can have a catalyst, associative impact or positive spill-over effect on adjacent properties in the same neighborhood. In the Johns Hill neighborhood, the catalyst project was the new Johns Hill School, along with the new neighborhood infrastructure and recreational enhancements funded by the Howard Buffett Foundation. In the Neighborhood United area, the rehabilitation and repurposing of the old Garfield School site, linked with a complete redesign of Garfield Park, will be the neighborhood catalyst project. In both of these neighborhoods,the city hopes catalyst projects will (along with other revitalization strategies) reverse housing stock decline and increase the percentage of owner-occupancy in existing and new housing. Each neighborhood's catalyst project will be different since the needs and redevelopment possibilities of each neighborhood are unique. Finding the right catalyst project for the Old Kings Orchard (OKO) neighborhood presents a different challenge because much of this neighborhood likely cannot be restored to the single- family residential community it was throughout most of the 20th Century.The OKO neighborhood now includes fewer and fewer residential structures every year. The city has not been able to locate any party interested in developing new or rehabilitated housing in OKO. Former single- family homes have been replaced by some small businesses on the periphery of the neighborhood. In the neighborhood's interior there are increasing numbers of institutional land uses (Good Samaritan Inn, Old Kings Orchard Community Center, God's Shelter of Love sites,the expansion of the Grace United Methodist Church campus, etc.). OKO also has one of the highest numbers of vacant/unutilized empty lots among the city's urban core neighborhoods. Last year the city completed a swap of vacant lots with Tom Kowa whereby the city gave him surplus vacant lots south of Marietta Street in exchange for him giving the city all the lots he owned north of Marietta Street. As a result, the city now owns a disproportionate number of vacant lots north of Marietta Street,and is the largest landowner in OKO north of Marietta Street. All of Mr. Kowa's lots, plus the lots the city transferred to him, were later transferred to the OKO Community Center, making this non-profit entity the largest landowner in OKO south of Marietta Street. These swaps now facilitate the development of new land uses, including the urban agriculture and community center recreation site proposed herein (see attached map).