Efforts to encourage owners of neglected Bolton Hill properties to fix them up or sell them to new owners have reached a stable point, with no new recent additions to the list.
“We are continuing to track 25 mismanaged properties,” Jeff Thompson, who chairs BHCA’s Neglected and Mismanaged Properties Committee, told the December association meeting. Ten of these properties are in legal proceedings: 5 are in foreclosure (or in court to determine ownership) and 5 are in receivership, he said. Four of these have cases this month, so some progress is underway.
Additionally, Thompson said, “We have 15 properties on our ‘Watch List,’ of which seven recently have received citations for trash, weeds, maintenance, or failure to obtain required rental registration or licensing. Most of these properties have non-resident owners.
Separately, several Bolton Hill residents have testified or written the City Council for BHCA in opposition to Council Bill 25-0066. If signed into law it would permit property owners to subdivide single-family rowhouses into up to four units as a matter of right, without city zoning or council review. Those opposing the bill say it invites absentee investors to acquire large residences like those in Bolton Hill and profit from renting them out with little maintenance.
One neglected property up for court review is the building at 1700 Eutaw Place, at Wilson Street. An architect and lawyer representing New York investors who owned that property came to a BHCA meeting in March 2020, wanting the association to endorse their plan for renovating what once was the Kensett House Apartments, which even then was long-vacant and in decay. They had plans for a 24-unit renewal with some market rate rentals and others subsidized. BHCA endorsed the plan.
Responding to BHCA recent nudging, the city’s Department of Housing and Community Development has become involved but has, so far, declined to petition to put the property into receivership, which might lead to an ownership change.
—Bill Hamilton
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