SitemapJerry Hughes has lived in his East Lucius Avenue home for about 16 years.
Thursday morning he sat in a lawn chair watching as an excavator rendered the vacant house a few doors down to rubble.
“It’s good that they’re tearing down abandoned houses, but it’s sad because that was a beautiful house,” Hughes said.
He was last in it when its last renters lived there about eight years ago,
The house at 585 E. Lucius is the first of 12 in the Taft Elementary School neighborhood that will be demolished through a partnership between the city and the 910th Airlift Wing at the Youngstown Air Reserve Station in Vienna.
Patty Wilson, who lives across the street, agreed that the house being demolished Thursday used to be a nice one.
“I hoped someone would fix it up and move in,” she said.
But Councilman John R. Swierz, D-7th, said the inside of the house was in bad shape and the windows had been boarded up.
All of the houses slated for demolition are between East Boston and East Avondale avenues on the city’s South Side.
“Taft Elementary School is in this neighborhood, and probably 90 percent of them walk to school,” Swierz said.
Demolishing the houses will make that journey safer, he said.
The reservists, members of the 910th’s Civil Engineer Squadron, benefit from the training, said Col. James Dignan, the airlift wing’s commander.
City employees provide guidance as the reservists operate the equipment.
The colonel said reservists benefit from the real-life experience.
“It’s a lot better than what we call moving dirt,” he said.
Both Dignan and Abigail Beniston, the city’s code enforcement and blight remediation superintendent, said the agreement between the two entities took a long time to finalize because of all of the levels of government that needed to approve it. Dignan said the agreement had to be approved by the Pentagon.
Swierz hopes the neighborhood block watch puts the lot to use.
“I’d love to see it turned into a community garden,” he said.
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