Transforming blighted properties in Gary to generate tax revenue is key to city’s future
Imagine holding a piece of property that has been in your family for generations.
Imagine the property consistently costs your family money and needs more and more repairs. It does not get used, so it’s not generating any revenue, and it takes up a great deal of space.
Next, imagine some of the people in your family insisting you keep the property for more generations because they have sentimental ties to the property.
Finally, imagine those same family members are not helping pay for the property, and they have no idea what to do with the property.
You very likely will have two choices: you can keep remembering what the property was and what it could be, or you can reimagine transforming the property into something that uplifts and helps support your family.
In the City of Gary, we have properties that can and must be developed and transformed into property tax generating businesses and homes and opportunities. When the people of Gary elected me to be their Mayor, I instructed my team to look for new growth opportunities while also making Gary a better place to live and work.
The City of Gary Redevelopment Commission, or RDC, owns many properties through-out the City that can be developed and turned into new business opportunities. We will continue to work with the RDC staff and the six-member Commission Board to identify the best fits between businesses and those properties.
The RDC and the Gary Housing Authority, both of which are guided by independent boards of directors, are two of the agencies that can take control of abandoned or ne-glected properties. In time, and after deep and lengthy consideration, those properties also can be turned into new opportunities. All decisions are made in open meetings to encourage transparency. There are times when these agencies and boards simply cannot share all of the details in
negotiations, but the goal is to always make the most of the property we have. But, economic development isn’t just about bringing in big businesses.
The basics of economic development are simple:
We must have a clean city, where residents can feel pride when they look out of
their windows;
We must have a safe city, where we all can raise our families and build our dreams;
We must give our residents, businesses and visitors the best possible customer service at all of our City of Gary facilities.
In other words, when we
create a better environment for our residents, we create a place where businesses want to do business.
In fact, we recently announced a massive and ongoing clean-up project we hope will touch every neighborhood in our City and get every resident, business, community or-ganization, block club and school excited about cleaning up our City.
And, we won’t stop there. My team and I will continue to look for ways to bring businesses and housing developers to Gary. We will continue to examine our available properties and make arrangements to put them on the tax rolls. We will continue to build excitement over solid opportunities.
Yes, we will make mistakes, but we will not just sit by and wait for perfect opportunities, because they do not exist.
Finally, we will not cave in to Monday morning armchair quarterbacks who have all the answers after the fact and who can point out everything they would’ve done, even if they’ve never stepped onto the playing field.
Stick with us. Be patient. We will continue to reimagine our properties and our opportunities, and we will continue to give our best shot.