Building Blight Bulldozed

Eighteen years after an abandoned building began posing a public safety hazard on Winchester Avenue, the city has had its final remnants bulldozed and is filling in a treacherous hole in the ground.

That bulldozing took place this week at 235 Winchester.

Deeming the property unsafe, the city first issued a demolition order to the owner three weeks ago. When bricks kept falling on the ground and holes in a fence enabled people to trespass onto dangerously sunken property, the city decided it needed to bring its own crew to do the job and protect public safety, Acting Building Official Bob Walsh told the Independent Friday.

Since 2005, the former 18-unit brick apartment building has been vacant, the subject of an ongoing dispute between the city and developer Kenny Hill over a $168,000 lead paint grant. The property became blighted, with potential dangers from both the blighted remains of the building and an open pit where the bulk of the building once stood. Meanwhile, new investment was improving the blocks around it.

A stalemate continued through the current day, with both sides blaming each other for the problem while neighbors pressed City Hall for action. Hill himself encountered problems with his lender, which is currently pursuing a foreclosure lawsuit against Hill’s companies for both that property and another stymied renovation project a block away at 201 Winchester. The city is, too. Click here and here to read previous coverage detailing the disputes.

A more immediate stalemate — over public safety at an unsafe property, rather than the long-term development process — has occurred over the past six years. The city issued four demolition orders for the remaining walls of the crumbling entrance and orders to seal the property, according to Walsh. Hill took out permits to do the work. But it never got done.

New reports of safety problems prompted Walsh to take action this week. The front entrance is now completely gone. Within a week the city expects to have clean fill in the entire hole in the ground and the property’s perimeter closed off to trespassers.

“It’s been six years,” Walsh said. ​“The building was continuing to deteriorate. People could just walk through the fence. The bricks were bouncing off the sidewalk. We had to take action.”

Hill, a former Yale football star and NFL cornerback-turned-housing developer, was asked for comment Thursday on the latest development.

“I didn’t realize they’ve done that. I’m out of state. I wasn’t aware of that,” he said, so he chose to refrain from commenting until he obtained more information.

As for the property’s long-term prospects, a series of city development officials have negotiated with Hill over the past two decades in hopes of resolving past financial disputes and seeing work resume on the otherwise reviving stretching of Winchester. It didn’t happen.

Now the city may need for the foreclosure suits to resolve themselves. City Development Administrator Mike Piscitelli said his office looked at the prospect of buying the land under an upcoming land banking program funded by pandemic relief dollars. But the accumulated debt on the property made it too expensive a prospect.

That holds as well for 201 Winchester. Hill did do some renovation work there, but that project, too, has stalled and is in foreclosure proceedings as well.