Hi all. Sorry I haven’t been blogging much. I’ll be back on the beat soon.
In the meantime, did you see the Cardinals sweep the Cubs this weekend? Albert Pujols hit the game-winning home run two games in a row! Ah, sweet victory. Wish I could have been there.
You’d think Quade would have learned his lesson after Saturday’s game. Thank goodness I didn’t watch Sunday’s game or furniture would have been flying!
Carlos Marmol should receive a temporary demotion from being closer. But there’s no one in bullpen good enough to become a closer. I feel so sorry
for Zambrano, because he has pitched 2 great games, only to have the bullpen blow it.
So what happened to the 24-13 or so Cub team from Aug.-Sept. 2010 that
Quade managed when he took over? Getting 3 players from Tampa Bay
hasn’t been that good. Even before all the injuries, the Cubs were
not executing as far as getting those lutch hits.
Knowing Pujol’s ability to hit almost any pitch into the stands
should have meant walking him intentionally, especially in Sunday’s
game.
Albert who?
In the words of Ron Santo, ” OH NOOO!!!”
Yea, beating the Cubs is a feather in your cap.
Cubs just lost 7th in a row.
Time to reexamine Quade’s contract? He seems a nice guy and all on camera, but for some reason the players are not as motivated as they were last August-September.
Tyler Colvin needs to back to Arizona for batting rehab.
Anyone in Triple A wielding a hot bat these days?
On a more serious note, anyone here have specific issues/questions for Councilmen Turner & Weaver, and County Board member Mike Whelan? Got them coming on CAPtions for a “Your Government at Work” theme. Also trying to get Akeson, plus couple other County Board members, and 2 State legislators.
Dennis: Quade is a real baseball person; he’s been in the game a long time, knows the fundamentals, isn’t a big mouth phoney like Lou was, and can actually coach the game. He is dprobably a diamond in the rough, and if they give him some ballplayers, he will flourish as will the Cubs (and I’m a Cardinal fan) but I wish him well.
Agree. God couldn’t be successful coaching this with this team. Talent is poor and injuries ended any chance of a .500 season. Quade is a good baseball guy.
Dennis:
When is government going to get back to basics instead of having champaign and cavier on a beer budget? How will government get back to basics … no museums, river plexes, ball stadiums …. etc. and provide paved streets with curbs, sewers that work and an effective strategy to reduce crime, increase the redevelopment of the inner core of Peoria … you know the basic questions which seemingly are given lip service while the insanity continues.
How will Peoria fund their pension obligations?
P.S. FYI …Mike Phelan with a ‘P’ not a “w’…. 🙂
Thanks for input, Karrie. Sorry about typo on Mike Phelan.
Dennis, please ask them about the flawed housing court & demolition process we have in this city that is causing good houses in our old neighborhoods to be demolished simply because they become abandoned. I have been discussing this issue back and forth recently through e-mail with Chuck Weaver & Beth Akeson. If you have an email address I can send you more details on it. It’s a very serious problem we have in our older sections of the city.
McArdle lawsuit had a hearing today. Anyone want to share?
Justice: What was the hearing about?
Someone on Emerge Peoria reported that Mary Davis filed a claim for racial discrimination against an Illinois agency.
Just to set the record straight: On Emerge it says that Ms. Davis filed a claim against district 150 for alleged racial discrimination. It was filed with an Illinois agency not against one!
Mr. Lane, my email is deggemeyer@pcceo.org
I’m trying to get Koehler & Leitch on as well (LaHood not available)
We had an hour with Jehan Gordon a few weeks ago.
Mr. Lane. Flawed demolition process in Peoria? Hardly. As an example, the house at 2501 W Martin Luther King Jr Dr which caught fire and was gutted over 8 years ago is still standing untouched and boarded up. The roof, which has a hole in it has been covered with a blue tarp which has worn out 3 times and has been recovered. How can this be?
“Flawed demolition process in Peoria”? You bet. Can’t get some torn down for YEARS of neglect and empty Perfect set up for arson fires.Then the set boarded up for years also.
That’s part of the flawed system. Many good houses get torn down simply because they’re abandoned by an investor who doesn’t want to be bothered with selling it and others, like those mentioned that may truly be beyond repair, remain standing for years. I have called code enforcement many times trying to determine how they pick and choose which ones go and which ones stay and it appears to be completely arbitrary. No one will give me any clear answers on this and they often act annoyed that I’m talking to them. It’s why I’ve gone to council members asking for a more transparent process and changing it to give opportunity to the public to purchase and rehabilitate the houses before they’re demolished. A remade house always looks better than an empty lot.
In my neighborhood there’s a house that was set for demolition until someone found a way to get posession of it at the last minute. I saw it for the first time the other night and words cannot describe what a mistake it would have been to destroy it. It is completely solid, even before cosmetic repairs were begun. It will go from the demo docket to a $100k house soon because someone had the foresight to see it was worth saving. The profit margin will be huge on this place if he ever sells it. Part of the problem with our urban decay in Peoria is a lack of this kind of vision by the city.
Mr. Lane, there in lies the issues. Many of the areas of town which are older neighborhoods, one cannot get $100K for a house. The incentive to restore or even rebuild is very low. I am going through this in my area. The direct cause has been the investment of our tax dollars to build the growth cells out north which in turn allowed infastructure to decay in the areas already paying taxes. Now getting the taxes from the properties out North clearly cannot sustain the significantly increased cost of maintaining, repairing, or replacing the areas originally effected. There are a few pockets where this has not changed, RR, Moss, Uplands, Arbor. These areas however are the preferred areas by the council and get the infastructure and staff funding. Our area cannot attract restoration or replacement because each house would result in a significant loss–meaning not only could someone interested in those prospects recoup their base line cost, they could not make any type of profit. The ones making the profit are those putting section 8 into the houses and not making the necessary repairs on the property in order to maximize profits. Homeowners are also trapped because they cannot get recoup the cost of their investments either.
Paul, you also must realize that the houses in your neighborhood are smaller and more managable than on Moss and Randolph. If the city took posession of a derelict house where a landlord refused to fix code violations and, instead of demolishing it, sold it for a few thousand dollars to a savvy rehabber who put 20k into it, it could sell for around 40k or 50k, making it a low price house that still brings a profit. This is what the guy up the street is doing. In effect, the city has its own revolving fund. There are 3 houses on Richmond getting prepped for demolition because the owner (same guy for all 3) is being a stubborn jerk and letting them fall in on themselves instead of selling. Do you not believe someone should have a chance to buy them in a public auction and fix them up for a profit instead of having 3 more empty lots? I personally know people who would have purchased a few houses around my neigborhood and restored them before they were demolished if only they’d known what immediate danger they were in.
Have you driven through the Orchard District lately? That was a warzone 15 years ago. Unfortunately, some houses have been demolished, but many others have taken on new owners and new faces and are now starting to be worth more and are effectively raising the value of the surrounding homes. The same thing can happen in other neighborhoods too.
Where is this “Orchard District” located?
Mr. Lane – if your friends were so interested in rehabbing the properties why didn’t they buy them and do just that? I agree I’d rather look at a nice house than an empty lot. However, if I have to look at eyesore I’d rather have the lot. If you had to look at an eyesore everyday like I do in the 1000 block of Madison. It has been stripped pretty much, no furnace, no interior walls, and the staircase bumpout is about to fall off. It’s been that way for years but I’m speculating that nothing has been done because it’s owned by the neighborhood association president. Personally I’d rather look at green grass and maybe not have my property value being dragged down.
I love the speculation that driving by a house once or twice “I can fix the for x I bet.” Love it. What looks like an easy cosmetic fix can quickly become a 20k problem. For example I worked on a property that the owner thought they needed to replace shingles. Ok 6k no biggie. Oh wait the decking and rafters are shot and undersized anyway. Tear off the rafters and the old deck replace all that then reshingle. Bam 25k.
Figure that you are gutting a 1500 sq ft house and redoing the entire thing from the ground up. Not being new construction you would be looking at 90 sq ft to finish if you are hiring work so we’ll say like 40 for a “savy” diyer. Thats roughly 60k if you are doing the work then add whatever you pay for it. Good luck with that.
What often happens with “savy rehabbers” they dont pull permits, they dont do the work correctly and they dont address the real problems a property has which means they pass their mistakes and the former owners mistakes to the next guy.
Im not saying that you should make a huge profit if you love a property but many people dont go into home ownership with the intent to take a loss.
I agree, I’m not suggesting your average person on the street can do this. I’m talking about professionally trained contractors getting a chance to purchase and fix a problem property before it’s torn down, not people who watch cable TV then think they’re experts. I personally know two licensed contractors who wanted to buy some houses before they were torn down and redo them practically from scratch. The reason they did not, Leslie, is because of all the red tape, starting with not knowing how to find the owners. In one case, he believed the current owner was in the process of restoring the property, only to drive by one day and see it gone. It wasn’t till after he met me that he discovered it hadnt been lived in for 30 years and had an owner who refused to sell it in that time before the city condemned it. I’m suggesting the city should have given him, or anyone, a chance to buy it before they destroyed it. If it didnt get fixed by the new owners in a timely manner, then demolish it as a last resort. Unfortunately our city is full of these types of owners. The same guy that owns the three Richmond properties also owns the eyesore at 1000 Madison which was once a beautiful mansion. It’s such a shame he was able to do this to these properties and neighbors while he lived comfortably in the 61615 area code. In my opinion, the city has a duty to interveen in these cases before it gets to the point of demolition, because it’s us who have to live around this chaos that suffer the most.
I’d venture to guess there are other professionals out there who also want to do what these guys want to do if given the proper motivation. Getting a condemned, but salvagable house from the city for a few thousand bucks with the possibilty of making several thousand in profit is pretty good motivation. What I’m suggesting is the city make it easy to get these houses out of the hands of the irresponsible ones and put them in the hands of someone who will take care of them, so our property values don’t continue to go down. Our property values will still go down with an empty lot there.
Orchard district is the neighborhood bordered by Main, North, Columbia & Sheridan. It still has a long way to come, but it’s miles better looking than it was back in the day.
Mr. Lane, Yes the house at 1000 Madison was once a beautiful home as was 1024 Madison. Both have fallen into such serious disrepair that I am not sure they can be saved. I’d love it if someone would purchase them and fix them up. As it is the just sit and deteriorate a little more each day. And the person or persons who own them don’t apparently care. They don’t live down here. What is funny though is that if those houses were in THEIR neighborhood I’m sure they’d be up in arms to get them fixed or torn down. But since it’s the North Valley who really cares since it’s just a bunch of slums and bums down here – at least that seems to be the prevailing opinion. Never mind that there are owner occupied homes that are kept up. I wonder if those folks that think the North Valley is such a horror realize that Senator Koehler and Peoria Board member Lynn Scott Pearson live down here?
I know what you’re saying. A friend of mine just bought a house on Madison after discovering Sen. Koehler lives there. If more people would stop living in fear and running away from the problems instead of facing them, then our old neighborhoods would become more desirable. Anyway, I obviously care about saving every old house in Peoria, but I’m willing to compromise if there’s no one to save them. All I ask is that the city help instead of hinder the process by confiscating bad properties from people like Gene Gathers and offering it to rehabilitators before knocking it down.
What ever happened to the Shame on Peoria blog? It was a good one that didn’t last very long. Here’s an entry about 1000 NE Madison.
http://shameonpeoria.blogspot.com/2005/08/1000-ne-madison.html
Mr. Lane:
To answer your question about rehabbing houses in my neighborhood for about $20,000 and reselling them. I have been able to find three people who have recently done this. The houses were solid still, but needed a lot of repairs due to crappy tenants. One person went to the trouble of restoring the house to what it was when it was built. It is beautiful on the inside. These three people want to sell to homeowners knowing that many of the area’s renters are destroying this area. None of them have had a single offer on any of the houses they redid except by landlords looking to for more Section 8 rentals. Reason: This area in the Second district is unimportant. Crime is allowed to flourish, no investment in infastructure, bad landlords/tenants abound. It just takes a drive through and those looking to start families or find a nice sustainable, affordable house will move on willing to spend more money on housing rather than deal with the nonsense. In looking at the city’s “vision” the Warehouse District, which I would submit is the “vision” of a couple of council people, Heartland-Chamber and some developers will be the primary focus. I would submit that if some of the leadership were to spend a month in some areas of town, living there, priorities would quickly change and that would end up benefitting the entire city. Someone said they would rather look at an empty lot rather than delapidated housing. I would agree and would add housing that only is able to attract the worst of our society. Poverty, race, and whatever factors someone wants to use as smoke and mirrors never will justify the ridiculous, disrespectful, criminal behavior of a growing population of our community. Until that particular issue is addressed we will fail in all other areas.
Paul – I wonder if you have the same problem in the 2nd district that we do in the North Valley? The worst of the properties are owned by the movers and shakers who don’t live down here and are apparently untouchable by Code Enforcement. If Joe Citizen allowed his property to deteriorate to the point that some of these houses are, he’d spend every week in housing court. What is REALLY frustrating is that one of the worst offenders is the neighborhood association president!
It’s hardly a unique problem reserved just to my area. I just tend to comment on my area because it is what I actually see, hear, etc. directly. So I know these to be factual. I would advise you to call code. If no response call Kunski, then Urich then council–at large is your best bet. Document when you called, to whom, the discussion and the responses. If something still isn’t resolved. Hold a big ole press conference. Invite various neighborhood folks to stand with you and ask why your concerns are not being addressed.
“Blogger’s Roundtable” coming Sunday on CAPtions! CJ Summers and Billy Dennis are the guests. Topics include bloggers and blogging in general;
commentary on various local media and current issues. Sunday, July 24th at 5 pm; Wednesday, July 27th 7 pm and later at Midnight on Comcast Cable 22.
Sorry, no sneak preview, been off all week. (Darn, too hot to repaint our door this week, too) But I will get it uploaded to YouTube, Facebook
next week. Catch Billy and CJ with host Andre Bohannon.