Council member Diane Hofstede informed residents at the 3rd Ward CARE meeting that the Northside Food Market owners had not yet submitted architectural plans for how they will comply with the orders to rehab their property. Instead, their plan appears to be an attempt to sue the city so that they can remain open for "business." Business in this case means renting out the 466-square foot apartment to whoever will bring in a constant parade of drug deals, and then blame the drug dealing on the bus stop in front of the establishment. A new round of community impact statements will certainly help keep Northside Food Market shut down until (if ever) the owners come up with a viable plan to address the problems associated with how the place has been run.
Astute readers will notice that the photo above is NOT of the Northside Food Market, but instead a picture of what may be the aesthetic nadir of the Hawthorne neighborhood; 2222 4th St N owned by Mahmood Khan; the property where Annshalike Hamilton's body was found. Khan has defied both city orders and reasonable housing expectations time and time again here. For instance, since the restoration agreement (which he has failed to meet) only said "new" carpet without specifying what "new" means, he apparently put in carpeting from a previous unit. Don't even get me started on the windows. (There are seven different kinds because if you can believe it, Khan was even less selective about windows than about the carpet.)
The city council will be taking up 2222 4th St N at 1:30 on Monday. Once again, impact statements should be sent to Diane Hofstede, or people can call her office at 612-673-2203.
What was interesting about this picture was the door, which until this week...
...wasn't boarded. Since the property appears to be more of a nuisance now than it has recently been, I decided to look around a bit more.
Something just isn't right with that roof, and the window is left open as well. The window isn't the only opening that's open to the elements.
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| 311 has been notified of a garage door open to trespass. |
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| If your windows don't match, then why bother with matching garage doors either? |
While the board is the typical city gray, the specialty screws used to board up properties weren't used here. Across the street at 2207 4th St N, we see what a city boarding job looks like.
So what prompted Khan to take a city board from another property and use that to secure 2222 4th? Will he have the board removed before Monday's hearing? Regardless, folks should contact Hofstede's office with impact statements for each of these communal eyesores.
I fully support this food market or apartment being open for business. I'll be sending a statment to this fact to her.
ReplyDeleteYou can go ahead and do that, but of course you'll have to actually identify yourself as an impacted resident when you do so. I encourage the upstanding folks who live around the store to submit statements describing how different (i.e. quiet, peaceful) the block has been with the store and apartment closed. Also, if there's work going on that's unauthorized, report that too.
ReplyDeleteFor the record, I'm generally not opposed to allowing a business to come back online after problems. If the owners actually submit a plan, stick to it, and succeed in creating a business that is a positive element in our community, then great. But right now they seem to want to skirt the city's rules and ignore their negative impact on the surrounding neighborhood. That's not acceptable.
The anonameass entity 8:49, a.k.a. 11 to nine, fully supports the structure operating unimpeded and reeking..er...raping..that's not it...Whoa Nellie...reaping the same type of profits and creating a feeling of nostalgia and misty memories of days gone by. A statement to this fact lies,also unimpeded,in the smelly footlocker of my subconscious blodder flashbacks. Reality answers only to a certain knock, and someday i predict that this spot will nourish and flourish with a tranquil garden full of blooming plants and flowers....once they remove the toxic waste, that is. Good Day.
ReplyDeleteHey, anonymous, just so I can get a handle on who you are, could you use the words "lose" and "loose" in a couple sentences? That might help me confirm my suspicions in regard to who you are.
ReplyDeleteOn another note...
I, for one, find it very worrisome when an apartment is "open for business."