Special Board of Aldermen 03-15-2021 Page 20
President Wilshire
| wanted to ask something, just before you wrap up. | have been familiar with this site since | was a kid,
lived just a couple blocks away on Broad Street. In fact, my brother-in-law worked there and it was awful. It
was an awful, smelly, dirty place and the neighbors have been waiting for 30+ plus years for the City to
take some action or someone to improve this site in their neighborhood. | think we owe it to them to do
what we can, aS much as we can. I’m not saying financially, but as much work as we can put into this to
make that a safe neighborhood for everyone. | think we owe it to our constituents and to the City.
| want to thank Director Cummings. | wouldn't take the TIF off the table, | mean | think everything has go to
be on the table right now. It has to be, right, because we don’t really have much else going. So you put
everything out there and then you pick and choose and fine tune it and then decide which way you want to
go, right? So that’s all | have tonight. You are up Director Cummings.
Director Cummings
Thank you, Madam President. And that’s exactly what | wanted to do is just have this kind of open
dialogue, hear everyone’s thought. Everything is going to get put on the table. We are going to shake some
things out; some things are going to stick. We are going to need to go down the path and what | am asking
and | was looking for some direction on is, you know, knowing very high level stuff, no details. Is it worth us
doing the work?
Because there’ s a lot of work that’s before us and | know that we are going to need to commit to doing
certain things and if it’s absolutely not in the realm of a possibility of us doing because it is just an adamant,
we are not entertaining these things and we are adamantly at a “no”? Well that’s just the kind of direction
and feedback | am looking for. We have a lot of discussion before us. There’s going to be a lot of
communication necessary; please | hope anyone on this Board reaches out to me if they have a question
or they want to suggest an idea. | need that direction, | need that feedback and hopefully | can represent
some sort of consensus and bring it before you and provide a recommendation which | am not able to do at
this time.
As Alderman Jette pointed out with his comments a little while back, | have asked repeatedly for the
Purchase & Sale Agreement that Blaylock has with the current owner. | would like to review that because |
would like to make sure that | know what the current owner may or may not be receiving for the sale in
terms of proceeds. And again, just doing our due diligence. So there are a lot of open-ended questions
right now; we don’t have a lot of answers. But this is the start of a conversation which could be very
beneficial to the neighborhood and which could be really the only real solution that we have for the
neighborhood. If we don’t move in a direction, we would just live with the status quo and that’s the
alternative and | don’t think folks want to do that. At the end of the day, | think we want to improve that land
so it can be developed in whatever way folks want. So | thank everyone for their time this evening. | will be
back to you with more information as the conversation progresses. And please, feel free to follow up with
me, if you have any questions or comments.
President Wilshire
Thank you Director Cummings.
