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Saturday, March 25, 2006
Fixing eyesore is no small task
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It used to be an Eckerd Drugs store.
Before that, it was a business that sells lawn mowers — Turf Machine Company Inc.
“I bought one of my first lawn mowers from them,” Gwinnett County Commissioner Bert Nasuti said. “Now they’re on Indian Trail Road” in Norcross.
Just off Jimmy Carter Boulevard, we take a left off South Norcross Tucker Road and pull into the shuttered Eckerds. Two men who appear to be day laborers mill around. Nasuti nudges his red Corvette to the back of the building.
“Look back here,” he told me, gesturing toward the litter. “Somebody didn’t buy that 12-pack here, but they stood here and drank it.”
This is Nasuti’s district, which takes in everything east of I-85 and west of Singleton Road. It encompasses some of the county’s most unkempt strip malls and standalone commercial property. Nasuti can recall when many of the malls first went up. He’s seen some of them transform from sparkling retail strips to recycled, run-down complexes.
On Thursday, we spent nearly two hours surveying this asphalt jungle. Some centers, like Wellington Square on Indian Trail Lilburn Road, are well-maintained. Others, well, I don’t have to tell you. You see them.
The question is what can Gwinnett do to make the owners and landlords tidy up. Turns out it’s not as easy as you’d think. Many of the property owners are absentee landlords. And sometimes the property owner is listed as an investment firm on the county tax rolls. The address might be a post office box.
“Who are we going to call and complain to?” Nasuti asked rhetorically. “We have to find a human being, and sometimes that can take days.”
Then there’s this little thing called due process.
Say someone lodges a complaint with the county about the Eckerds off South Norcross Tucker Road. One of the county’s 12 code enforcement officers would inspect the property and document violations. He’d make a report, then send a certified letter that outlines the violations. The owner would be given a certain amount of time to make corrections, depending on their severity.
Assume the deadline passes and the owner hasn’t officially responded. Then, an inspector has to return and note that the violations remain. At that point, a citation would be issued and mailed to what the county hopes is the right address. The owner or the tenant would be given an arraignment date to appear in Recorder’s Court. That date could be four to six weeks after the notification. If the owner or his representative shows up in court, he can pay a paltry fine or plead not guilty. If he pleads not guilty, a trial date gets set, probably 30 to 45 days out. The eyesore, meanwhile, festers with graffiti and graft.
All the above assumes that the county has identified the correct owner and has the right address.
There’s got to be a better way. Nasuti may have one. He’s proposed that the county adopt a comprehensive ordinance that addresses the condition of residential and commercial buildings, everything from paint to siding, gutters, litter and landscaping.
And here’s the part I like.
Nasuti wants to play hardball with those absentee owners or landlords who are given the chance to do right but refuse. Their property would be declared a public nuisance and condemned. The county would put a lien on it, clean it up, then pass the costs of the clean-up to the owners.
“That would be a last resort,” he said. “But there needs to be some real teeth in the comprehensive code to put owners on notice that there are standards and standards must be maintained.”
Nasuti also has ideas that would make it easier to track down property owners. He wants to require absentee owners to keep on file with the county the name and contact information of someone responsible for dealing with code violations.
Wonderful ideas. I hope the rest of the commissioners see the need for them.
Their respective districts may not have the eyesores that Nasuti’s has, but they could in another five to 10 years.
Rick Badie’s column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Contact him at 770-263-3875. Or e-mail: rbadie@ajc.com.
