JAMESTOWN – A group of city residents on Jamestown’s north side attended the Jamestown City Council meeting on Monday night to voice their concern about a proposed housing development by the Citizen’s Opportunity for Development and Equality, also known as CODE, Inc.
More than a dozen residents from a neighborhood on Spring St. were at Monday Night’s city council meeting to let city officials know they didn’t want a development similar to the Appleyard Terrace development (which is owned by CODE and is located along E. Second St.) going up in their neighborhood.
City resident Donald Payne spoke to the council explaining their concerns.
“We’re totally against bringing more drugs, robberies, house break-ins, and that sort of stuff, which happens down on Second St. a lot of times,” Payne said. “We’re totally against. We’d like to see what the city council and the mayor can do about putting a stop to the situation. We already have enough trouble on the north side – on Spring, on Prendergast, on Lakeview. Let’s put a stop this before it starts.”
After Payne and another resident expressed their concerns about the project, city councilman Tony Dolce (Ward 2) saying he knew nothing about the project but would look into it and get back to the residents with information. However, city council woman Vicki James (Ward 3) said she did now about the proposed project and an informational community meeting with CODE had already taken place, much to the surprise of Dolce and the residents in attendance.
“I had some concerns about the development and we held a recent meeting with CODE to learn more and we were assured the development project would not be similar to [Appleyard],” James said.
When Dolce asked why he was not informed about the meeting, it was explained that there wasn’t a sufficient effort in telling city officials it was taking place, but also that other informational meetings would also take place well before the project would ever move forward.
Jamestown mayor Sam Teresi also said that the project would instead be more similar to the Euclid Gardens housing on the north side of town.”These would be single or double occupant apartments and not family units like those on Second St.,” Teresi said.
Jamestown Development Director Vince DeJoy also told WRFA following the meeting that right now CODE is still trying to secure funding for the project and until that takes place it won’t be moving forward. He said that the city would also have to review and approve site plans for the project before it could get underway.
WRFA had reached out to CODE in December to learn more about the proposed project, but CODE executive director Pat Morris did not return the call.
We do not need these housing complexes. If code wants to help people get funding to rehabilitate all these condemned houses and help rebuild the tattered houses that need it. Also step up and do something with the appleyard because its out of control