| Florida Today TITUSVILLE — Contractors boarded up an apartment complex this week and another faces demolition within the next few months after the city targeted the buildings as health and public safety hazards.
Issues with the two properties — Inspiration Point and Brown’s Apartments — persist, including an overdue water bill, lengthy code enforcement violations, criminal activity, two foreclosures and a pending nuisance order.
Still, city officials sounded optimistic that these issues could be resolved, after finally being able to reach lawyers for the property owner, Double Quad Holdings of Weston.
“We feel it’s a positive thing that’s happening,” City Attorney Dwight Severs said. “Hopefully we can secure the neighborhood for everybody who lives in the community.”
Within six months, the city plans to tear down Brown’s Apartments at 550 Brown Ave., empty and boarded up for at least two years. Inspiration Point apartments at 1520 S. Deleon Ave., recently declared both a public nuisance and unfit for human occupation by the city, was boarded up this week.
The property owner still owes more than $17,000 in code enforcement fines on the Brown’s Apartments for poor maintenance and overgrown landscaping. The firm also faces thousands of dollars in code fines if it doesn’t make concerted efforts to bring Inspiration Point into compliance and pay a $5,332 past-due water bill on the property.
The city also plans to move forward with a nuisance order against Inspiration Point, prompted by the seemingly magnetic draw the building presents for crime — which could eventually get a judge involved in the property’s fate.
Inspiration Point‘s troubles displaced people who lived in the 49-unit building that housed mostly the elderly, disabled and down-and-out who contended with high crime at Queen and Deleon avenues. Most moved out with the city’s help in early December, when they heard the water could be shut off, which happened Jan. 14.
Marylee Jenkins, 42, with a felony drug record, couldn’t get the assistance the city provided to place the residents in new homes. She squatted in Inspiration Point for days after the water stopped and she said she’ll likely live in the woods until she gets her disability check later this month, which paid her $369 monthly rent.
“Basically, what you’re telling me, I’m on the street?” she said, relating her conversation with the city. “I have to find my own place.”
She said she liked her humble one-bedroom apartment at Inspiration Point. She blamed the crime on outsiders, whom she called “jitterbugs.”
Some of those “jitterbugs” tore into the place minutes after the apartments emptied. On a recent afternoon before the boarding up, Jenkins walked her blue, second-hand bicycle past piles of litter and debris scattered in the apartment complex’s courtyard.
Vandals had smashed most of the apartments’ windows, taking the aluminum frames for quick money. Appliances ripped out of apartments lay in pieces.
Crime remains
Double Quad Holdings Corp. bought several Brevard County properties in 2004, including Brown’s Apartments and Inspiration Point, for $2.5 million. The purchase thrilled Titusville officials, especially after the company worked on Inspiration Point, gutting and refurbishing the cinderblock building.
“We were so excited when Inspiration Point was rehabbed,” said Danielle Trazzera, a city code inspector.
But a prettied-up building couldn’t stop lawbreakers from gathering there. The apartment complex accounted for four of the city’s 31 homicides since January 1998 and most of the city’s north-side police calls since 2004, according to police reports.
By 2007, the renovations had faded, even as the criminal activity continued.
That year, Double Quad Holdings mortgaged the Titusville properties with the Joseph Campi Revocable Lifetime Trust for $1.1 million, due this June, according to public records. Foreclosure proceedings began in November, making it harder for the city to put liens on the property for any past-due code enforcement fines.
Company representative Matthew Whitehead could not be reached for comment at his business or via cell phone.
That doesn’t surprise the Fleur Di Lis homeowners’ association in Oklahoma City, to which Whitehead and his associates owe months of past due association fees, according to the association treasurer, Gary McFarlane. McFarlane said Whitehead has been unreachable for the last month.
Whitehead’s investment companies also face two lawsuits in Broward County.
A work in progress
Workers spent late last week picking up trash and nailing up plywood on the gaping doors and windows at Inspiration Point. Vandals can no longer get in and damage the property, and there are no residents left to facilitate crime.
Still, police have their hands full with Inspiration Point calls, said Lt. Cleyton Bray, who oversees police patrols in the north part of the city and tried unsuccessfully to get the property owner to increase security measures.
“As far as Inspiration Point, nothing new there,” said Bray, who added that Titusville police responded to 200 calls there during the past two months — the most calls in the north part of the city. “We still have people being shot there, and still major scenes there as far as drug dealing.”
Contact Raynor at 360-1016 or jraynor@floridatoday.com.
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What’s next
Double Quad Holdings, Corp. needs to clean up Inspiration Point and make it safe by boarding it up. The case will appear before the code enforcement board on Feb. 11. If the company doesn’t follow through with its promises to secure the property, it could face thousands of dollars of fines and further city action.
The city already entered an order that Brown’s Apartments at 550 S. Brown Avenue should be demolished, City Attorney Dwight Severs said. That could take six months to happen, as the city has to wait 90 days to put in a final judgement and then spend more time putting it out to bid.
Anyone found on the Inspiration Point property is now subject to trespassing charges.
July 15, 2008
Section: LOCAL/STATE
Edition: Final/All
Page: B01 Mall’s redevelopment plans worry tenants
JESSICA RAYNOR
Staff JESSICA RAYNOR |
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| Florida Today TITUSVILLE — Moving week for Ray Hall’s Prison Book Project means scrounging for able bodies who won’t walk off the job and hauling 50 tons of books in his ancient Ford Ranger.
But Hall had little choice but to move from his now-former warehouse, located in a leaky building at the northwest edge of Miracle City Mall property.
A representative from the real estate firm charged with managing the property called him earlier this month to let him know he had to leave within the month.
The mall found him a temporary space inside the main building to keep his hundreds of boxes of faith-based literature, which get sent to prisons across the United States and to the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But that space is good for only two months.
“I’ve got to shut down all incoming stuff, unless I find a place between now and then,” he said.
Hall’s situation worries some month-to-month tenants inside the Miracle City Mall, who wonder when their turn will be, in light of a sweeping redevelopment of the mall.
The mall’s owners plan to demolish the outbuilding as the first step in the process.
Mall manager Sia Stevens said none of the tenants know when, like Hall, they will be forced to relocate.
Many already have left voluntarily — to nearby Searstown Mall.
“They’re being patient,” she said of the remaining tenants. But “no one knows what will happen with their business.”
Berger Commercial Real Estate, manager of the property, insists no one has officially been served with notice-to-vacate notices, even as Hall and his building co-occupant, Press-Tige Cleaners, both received word they needed to leave — Hall by phone call, the cleaners by letter.
Reese Stigliano, a principal with the Fort Lauderdale-based firm, suggested that the forced move-outs could be because of the dilapidated nature of the
hurricane-damaged outbuilding.
He said Firestone, which occupies the southeast outbuilding, just signed a two-year lease, proving the company isn’t intending on kicking tenants out anytime soon.
Also the owners have not filed any demolition permits with the city, according to city officials.
“We were on track for redevelopment,” Stigliano said. “A large component of the redevelopment was residential. Because of the collapse of the residential market, we’ve had to go back to the drawing board, and find out what is economically feasible at this point in time.”
Meanwhile, Hall needs a permanent place to store his books, preferably somewhere where he can stretch his $100,000 building fund.
He found property in Byrd Plaza in Cocoa for a relatively low monthly rent, but said he would rather stay somewhere in Titusville.
He has nothing but warm words for Miracle City Mall, the third location since his ministry’s inception in 1994. He’s had to pay for only electricity there.
“They’ve been giving us space here since 2001,” he said.
“That’s been a tremendous blessing to us. We just appreciate that so much. Soon as we move all the books, we’ll be feverishly looking for a new location.”
Contact Raynor at 360-1016 or jraynor@floridatoday.com.
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To learn more
For more information about the faith-based Prison Book Project, call 269-4100, or stop by the distribution center at 3880 S. Washington Ave., Suite 154, Titusville. |
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August 11, 2007
Section: LOCAL/STATE
Edition: Final/All
Page: B01 Titusville has plans for latest wellfield
JESSICA RAYNOR
Staff JESSICA RAYNOR |
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| Florida Today TITUSVILLE — The city will move forward with plans to develop its latest wellfield, after a judge determined the site can sustain water production with no ill effects. The recommended order means a long battle is almost at an end with nearby property owner Miami Corp. over a consumptive use permit (CUP,) which gives the city permission to draw out the groundwater.The city spent about $3 million in legal fees since 2001 defending the permit application, according to city records. It also means the city will soon have another source of needed water, to rest aging wells and meet future demands, officials said.
“It’s our water supply future,” City Manager Mark Ryan said.
The order recommends the city pump 750,000 gallons each day from the site until the expiration of the consumptive use permit in 2010. The city had asked for 2.7 million gallons each day.
Both sides have 15 days to file exceptions to the order — outlining disagreements with the order, or asking for clarification. St. Johns River Water Management District board makes the final determination at its Sept. 11 meeting, City Attorney Dwight Severs said.
But the city is thinking positive. Ryan said the city council will decide at its Tuesday meeting whether to move forward with design and construction, which should take about a year to complete.
The city’s issues with water date back almost 20 years. Salt-water intrusion and choloride levels — signs of aging wellfields — started showing up in the late 1980s. By 1995, the city contracted with Cocoa to provide the city with some water, which now accounts for 15 percent of the city’s water distribution, according to the annual water quality report.
The city applied for the Area IV wellfield CUP in 2001, after test wells in the area showed good water quality and potential for water production, said Raynetta Grant, water resources director.
But Miami Corp. filed an objection. The company owns 50,000 acres of land adjacent to the Area IV wellfield site, and was concerned about possible environmental effects, according to court documents.
“It was always the goal and intent of Miami Corp. to protect the land,” said John Warton, attorney for Miami Corp. “We’re pleased that only a fraction of what the city asked for was approved.”
Contact Raynor at 360-1016 or jraynor@floridatoday.com
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City’s water production
The city operates two wellfields: Area II, located near Interstate 95 in the northeastern part of the city, dates to 1955, and has 53 production wells; and Area III, in the south-central part of the city, with 35 production wells.
Area II produces about 3 million gallons each day (mgd) — much less than its pre-1988 yield, which pretty much sustained Titusville’s water needs. Area III produces just 1 mgd on an annual basis. There’s no Area I wellfield.
In 2006, the city pumped an average of 3.8 mgd from the Mourning Dove Water Production Plant, where the raw wellfield water goes for treatment.
– court documents, city of Titusville |
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