Mothballing legislation rolls toward city council...

[sheclown]

KEY:

vacant lots are hatched

abandoned houses are checked

no mark means a viable house was sitting on it.

This survey, the R/UDAT was done in late 1985 a little over a year before the neighborhood was declared a historic district.  It is easy enough to see for one's self the devastation which has occurred over the last 25 years.

[sheclown]

Find your block and compare.  Post your results here if you'd like.

[avs]

wow, in 1985 my block (the infamous BP block) had all viable houses on it.  Now it has (I hope I counted correctly): 7 empty houses and 2 vacant lots.  That doesn't count the commercial on the back of my block, which is not in the historic district.  It has 1 empty building and 2 torn down buildings, and of course, the BP.

[iloveionia]

avs.  do you have any idea when the enclave on your alley was demolished?

[avs]

No I don't.  The couple who owns the commercial property behind mine told me about it.  The wife apparently grew up in the house next door to me (Reggie's house now).  She said she remembered them from when she was young.  At some point, she and her husband owned the only one left, that faces the alley behind Reggie's house.  It was joined with their commercial property and zoned commercial.  Mark and I purchased the square parcel with the alley house on it several years ago and joined it with our property and had it zoned Residential again. 

The couple are probably in the 80's now.  But when she told us that it made sense to us because any where you dig in our yard if you go down far enough you will hit concrete slabs.  There was a 1 car garage in our yard when we bought the house too.  It was collapsing so we tore it down.  It looked like it was built in the 40's or 50's.  So I would guess the enclave was torn down before the garage was built.

I was told at some point that our house was the first on the block here, built in 1905.  So maybe they were erected shortly after as this block developed and torn down 20 - 40 years later?

[uptowngirl]

Looks like a lot of missing hatching on Ionia?

[avs]

This map is from 1985, if it were updated to show today's abandoned homes and vacant lots Ionia would have a lot of hatching.  Gloria, can you number each block and each of us take 5-6 and create an updated map?

[sheclown]

That would be amazing. Let's do it

[iloveionia]

We've kinda sorta already done this?  Uptown was taking lots of pics, myself, others and matching them to the plat map.

[iloveionia]

Well at least we started I meant to say.

[strider]

This is the info that was posted in October of 2010. I believe I complied it from what you and others came up with.  I don't know of anymore info being collected but for these four streets.?  This data suggests that between 1985 and 2010, 79 houses were demolished on only four streets.

Ionia Street ... 1985 ... 2010

Number of lots ... 80 ... 80
Number of abandoned houses ... 0 ... Est. 9
Number of vacant lots ... 8 ... 31

Percentage of houses lost prior to 1985 - 10%
Percentage of houses lost since 1985 - 32% - or now 39% of housing stock is gone.

So, if we assume that Ionia was 100% built out by 1920, it lost 10% of it's houses in the first 65 years, including about ten years of the worst history of Springfield for having crime, drugs and flop houses of all sorts and then it took only the next 25 years, about 10 of which were the most prosperous in Springfield in many decades, to lose an additional 32% of it's housing stock. Meaning, we lost fewer houses prior to being a protected historic district than we have with those protections in place. While some were of course due to things like fire, how many were due to social reasons rather than the house itself? How many have we lost unnecessarily due to "demolition by reckless policy?"

Interesting note - since this was done three more houses have been lost on Ionia. Two from fire and one just demolition? (And note that fire losses were often also "in the system" and on track to be demolished by MCCD anyway.) That is a 4% jump in less than a year!  And if the info in the 1997/1998 study is correct (60 total houses demolished between 1985 and 1997) then most of the Ionia Street losses probably had to occur in the past 14 years!

… I looked at three more streets . The information I am quoting from is found on this forum as well as metro Jacksonville and the data I am quoting from 1985 comes from the R/UDAT study, which is the study that was used to apply for Historic Status.

Laura Street - This information came from a resident who physically counted the empties and we also count the in-fill newer than 1985 as an empty lot as it represents a lost house.

Total empty lots 1985 - 13 Total Empty lots 2010 - 29 - a 120% increase in empty lots since Historic Designation.

Walnut Street - There seems to be a question of whether there are 136 total lots or 131. We used the 136 as it was the number used in 1985.

Walnut Street ... 1985 ... 2010

Number of lots ... 136 ... 136
Number of vacant lots ... 7 ... 39

Percentage of houses lost prior to 1985 - 5%
Percentage of houses lost since 1985 - 24% - or now 29% of housing stock is gone

Carmen Street - some may not even know of this two block long street nor realize that the entire two blocks are indeed within the historic district. It is hard to tell what is residential and what is not as this street is on the fringe of the historic district sitting between normal residential and what is often called the warehouse district. The information below is my best guess based on available data.

Number of empty lots 1985 - 11
Number of empty lots 2010 - 19

Estimated total number of lots - 23

This means that the percentage of empty lots in 1985 was 47 % and by 2010 we had lost another 35%.

In fact, this street has lost all of its housing stock. It was zoned light industrial in about 2000 and what few structures remain are commercial and industrial buildings.

[sheclown]

Well at least we started I meant to say.

and now, maybe, is a good time to finish.  I'd like to compare the R/udat map to a current one.

[sheclown]

We have an excellent "thingy" available on iPhones which will help with any survey done.  You simply stand in front of a house and click a photo which becomes part of the survey, answer a few questions as to the condition of the house, and it becomes part of the survey.

Any count in Springfield should begin and end with movedsouth's wonderful iPhone page...

http://www.metrojacksonville.com/forum/index.php?topic=11395.0

avs, let's do your block together!  Whaddya say?

[movedsouth]

actually I was thinking the thingy could be a bit more better for the survey, but I could probably get a better thingy done. If you have any feedback as to how to improve it, let me know before you do too many blocks ;-)

[sheclown]

Okay, Movedsouth,  if it isn't a "app", what is it (I mean, other than a thingy)?