2 Teardowns Avoided: Rehabs Planned

The city had two properties to sell. They were so rundown that even investors snapping up properties around town were uninterested. Two teardowns loomed.

Enter a homegrown rebuilder who rescues precarious properties. The city plans to sell him the two properties — at Sherman Parkway and Rosette Street — so he can rehab the buildings into owner-occupied single-family homes.

Those potential deals unfolded at the first meeting in 2020 of the board of directors of Livable City Initiative (LCI), the city’s increasingly anti-blight and neighborhood development agency.

The young builder in question is Ferdinand Escoffery and his essentially one-man company is ambitiously called National Construction, LLC.

In November he received the enthusiastic backing of the often builder-skeptical Hill South Community Management team to do a gut re-hab of the property in question at 151 Rosette St.

“I use my own money, and I hire people from the neighborhood,” including guys who might be on parole, Escoffery said back in November. And he’s happy to let those individuals take time to appear at hearings or other required legal appearances. At that Hill South gathering Escoffery also said he is LCI’s go-to-guy often when other builders don’t want to make a bid on falling-down structures. ​“I do everything but the electric and the plumbing,” he said. Escoffery cited rehabs he has done not only in the Hill, at 152 Lamberton, but on Shelton Avenue and County Street.

That track record and positive management team support came into play this past Tuesday night as the LCI directors, after a thorough discussion, voted unanimously to sell the Rosette Street property to Escoffery for $10,000 and a second property at 601 Sherman Parkway for $15,000. The proposal now advances to the Board of Alders for a final vote.

As with all such blighted properties that fall into city ownership, the arrangement comes with a covenant that the builder sell to someone who pledges to live in the home for at least five years.

In the case of the Sherman Parkway property LCI staffer Evan Trachten, who conducted the board of directors’ meeting, said LCI regularly consults with the alder in the district about the disposition of property.

In the case of 601 Sherman Parkway, Newhallville Alder Steve Winter had asked the covenant be extended to ten years, an extra boost to help stabilize the neighborhood.

“This is the scariest property I’ve ever been in,” reported LCI Director Seth Poole, who toured 601 Sherman Parkway with Trachten. He and Trachten described a structure with a hole in the roof, squishy floorboards and huge dumpsters worth of waste and debris inside. LCI was shunned by the larger developers and investors when LCI put out a bid on them.

Poole said he is confident Escoffery can bring the property up to standard and code: ​“He owns his own truck. He keeps the property he works on clean. He replaces everything [questionable], lead, asbestos. He’s a top-flight developer.”

Director Neal Currie asked, ​“What about the five-year live-in? Can he break it?”

“The only way he can eliminate the owner occupancy requirement is that he must come back to us” to renegotiate, replied Trachten.

“And what if an occupant vacates before five years?” asked Poole.

“The new buyer must continue it,” Trachten said. ​“LCI tracks it. They can’t sell to Ocean [Management] after three years. It’s absolutely in the best interest of the city to get owner occupancy on these streets. Owner occupancy makes a neighborhood.”

Trachten said he didn’t foresee any problems with either of the properties. Escoffery gets work done on time and in a manner that will attract people, especially to the Sherman Parkway property, which is beautifully situated, with backyard views of Beaver Pond, Trachten said.

“This guy builds a house as if he’s going to live in it,” said Trachten. ​“He saves money by doing so much himself. He puts in nice granite countertops.”

The city not only gets property back on the tax rolls, but saves on $25,000 demolition costs, Trachten said of the deal.

LCI Director Pat Brett called the project ​“beautiful.” That Escoffery is a minority contractor and a model for others is an additional plus, she said. ​“It makes me proud.”

The votes on the LDAs, the land disposition agreements, for both properties were unanimous.