During a recent Avondale Estates commission work session, Mayor Jonathan Elmore made the surprise announcement that the city might seize property by eminent domain and also have to borrow money.
“Those are not bad things,” he told an audience of 12.
Save for City Clerk Gina Hill, no city staff was present at the work session.
Since his initial election three years ago, Elmore has talked about cleaning up the city’s street grid as a precursor to attracting development. From above, the area due west and northwest of the Tudor Village looks like an English hedge maze without the hedges. A number of streets dead end, or take 90-degree turns before dead-ending.
Elmore suggested several possibilities, including connecting Parry Street and Washington Street. Both run east-west along the southern edge of the old Fenner Dunlop Mill site, now owned by Avila Real Estate, dead-ending about 200 yards before joining.
Elmore also mentioned extending Franklin St. (a brief lane between Center and Oak Streets) and also extending Center and Lake Street, north-south roads that both dead-end at the Avila site.
“We all want a great [downtown] village,” Elmore said in an interview after the meeting. “We need tax money to grow our business district. This is an investment in our city.
“We will first ask the property owners to sell,” he added. “It’s quite possible, that in creating the grid we can work with property owners. If they don’t sell, we might have use eminent domain.”
The next step, he said, is hiring a consultant, or several consultants, to figure out street design, financing and how to implement eminent domain if needed.
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