Dayton begins process of demolishing hundreds of blighted properties in the city

DAYTON — The City of Dayton has started putting $15 million worth of the American Rescue Plan towards the demolition of blighted properties over the next three years.

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The demolitions are part of a new phase of the Dayton Recovery Plan and the goal is to leave neighborhoods better than they were before, a city spokesperson said in a news release Tuesday.

Steven Gondol, deputy director of Planning and Regional Development, says they are using the demolition stabilization dollars to remove blighted properties on a neighborhood and prepare for its potential reuse for new housing in the Old North Dayton Neighborhood.

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“The American Rescue funds will allow us to address our fire piles, our properties that need to be demolished and give us an opportunity to actually stabilize properties that are in key corridors or community assets,” Gondol said.

“We’ve never really had this opportunity on such a scale to tackle these blights in the neighborhoods.”

Gondol says they may have to take down as many as 1,000 nuisance properties but their their goal is to put the home back into reuse before demolition.

“We’re always looking first to put it back in productive use,” he said. “We’d always like to get people into housing where housing exists and only take it down when it’s a safety concern for the adjacent property owners and the community.”

City housing inspector Kenny Jackson gave News Center 7′s Mike Campbell a tour of the first nuisance home in the 1500 block of Chapel Street near Valley Street that needed to come down because the previous homeowner made changes that made it structurally unsound.

“It was not actually not correctly on the joist,” Jackson said. “The main beam of the house, it was also full of trash.”

City inspectors say it appeared illegal dog breeding took place and discovered seven pit bulls abandoned when they did their first inspections.

One neighbor, Mark Winkle, told News Center 7 that he’s complained to several city departments for two years for them to do work on these properties.

“You have to be a stick in the mud,” he said, “and you have to keep pestering.”

City representatives hope the project can be transformational for Dayton’s future and continues to do sweeps and survey. They recently added 300 more homes to the list of properties they’d like to take down.

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