Redevelopment plan takes on quality of life in Macon

The president of a south Macon neighborhood organization envisions a new playground that would offer a constructive place for children and teens.

The Lynmore Avenue playground would replace a group of blighted houses that have been sitting dormant for years. Antonio Lewis-Ross, president of a group called the South Macon Arts Revitalization and Technology, said the organization brought the idea to the attention of Macon-Bibb County Commissioner Larry Schlesinger to see if it could receive a portion of $10 million in blight funds that commissioners have to spend.

Schlesinger said yes and received the green light from the County Commission’s blight consultant. Commissioners have approved using $144,248 of blight money for the project.

The cooperation between a neighborhood group and county officials is part of a strategy listed in the latest Macon-Bibb County Urban Redevelopment Plan. The 60-page report details the depth of the problems that plague Macon-Bibb — from poverty to crime to blight —and provides methods to address them.

SMART’s community playground also will offer programs for people to take part in. A portion of the land is also being donated by local churches. The playground will replace the dilapidated structures children walk past after school.

“The best thing to do to start working towards a playground area was getting a group of citizens together working with commissioners,” Lewis-Ross said. “We talked with (Schlesinger) to see if we could begin spearheading the use of blight funds as a seed for the playground.”

The Urban Redevelopment Plan, recently approved by the County Commission, updates the 2011 version. This new plan expanded the scope of the neighborhoods designated as part of the Urban Redevelopment Area since Macon and Bibb County consolidation in January 2014.

“The trend of increased blight and disinvestment in the Urban Redevelopment Area can be expected to continue if action is not taken,” said Crystal Gaillard, the plan’s author. “While enormous strides have been made in reducing the blight, a strategic and targeted approach must be taken.”

The plan shows that Macon-Bibb’s poverty remains concentrated in middle and eastern sections of the county. Overall, Macon has a poverty level of 24 percent, or about 6 percent higher than the statewide average. Also, about 63 percent of crimes committed in 2014 occurred in the Urban Redevelopment Area.

“It’s a tool box,” said Gaillard, government services specialist for the Middle Georgia Regional Commission.

For instance, the plan has different strategies to deal with commercial and residential blight, she said.

One of the plan’s suggestions is to catalog each parcel of land throughout Macon-Bibb in order to determine how many properties may be considered blighted. Currently, of the 393 structures that have been identified through the courts as blighted, 375 of them are within the Urban Redevelopment Area, Gaillard said.

Those figures are likely underrepresented, she said.

“A 100 percent survey would be a really big help to the (Macon-Bibb County) Land Bank Authority, the blight consultant and all departments like code enforcement,” Gaillard said. “It would give a good, accurate picture of what’s going on.”

Identifying every property could help uncover some area that might be on the cusp of blight, and possibly an influx of money could prevent further decay, Gaillard said.

A perk of designating an Urban Redevelopment Area is that some tools such as Opportunity Zones are available. They can provide business owners a break by providing incentives.

“Opportunity Zones are one of the most sought-after of these (tools), because employees that are located within that area that create two or more jobs can get a tax credit for $3,500 per job, which is really significant,” Gaillard said. “This isn’t coming off local tax rolls, it’s coming off state tax.”

The plan also outlines issuing bonds that can be used in development, said Alex Morrison, executive director of the Macon-Bibb County Urban Development Authority.

The majority of the money that will be used on a series of blight projects like the the Lynmore Avenue playground comes from bonds approved by the county and Urban Development Authority.

“The (plan) communicates to developers that we are focused on certain areas, and we are focused on redevelopment and reinvestment,” Morrison said.

Schlesinger said working with other agencies and groups like SMART will be instrumental in rehabilitating areas throughout the county.

“It’s a plan for the entire community, and we’re going to have to come together as a community in order for the plan to succeed,” he said.

This story was originally published April 22, 2016 at 5:42 PM with the headline "Redevelopment plan takes on quality of life in Macon."