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by Paul Bass | Sep 29, 2005 8:22 am

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Posted to: West River

After years of displaying the nastiest face in the West River neighborhood, the so-called “Cage” — trouble-filled, ramshackle apartments on Sherman Avenue — received new siding this week. It may still be too little, too late for the neighborhood.

The neighborhood has been fighting with the Cage’s previous, then new, owners over conditions at the apartment complex. It’s considered the biggest problem in a neighborhood working hard to rebuild. City inspectors deemed it unfit for human habitation. Crime flourished there.

A crew from Comprehensive Construction LLC was hard at work Wednesday on the complex’s front building.

The back of the property remains a pit. Most of it is unoccupied.

West River neighborhood groups and Alderman Yusuf Shah convinced the city to begin plans to take the property by eminent domain, tear it down, and replace it with a child-care center. The owners insist they can still make it a nice place. (See the Advocate’s “Plan Down By the River.”)

The new siding didn’t impress Joyce Poole, acting chair of the West River Neighborhood Revitalization Zone.

“I hope the guy’s not wasting his money,” Poole said. Because, siding or no siding, the neighborhood continues to press for the city to seize the property and raze the slum buildings.

The neighborhood has had a better experience working with its biggest institution, Hospital of St. Raphael. Among other projects, the hospital built this park at George and Orchard streets.

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