The first thing that you see when you turn onto Washington Blvd from MLK is a huge vacant building, formerly occupied by a Save-A-Lot grocery store. On any given day you are likely to see an assortment of Pigtown’s finest homeless and drug dealers hanging out in front of and behind the property. The current owners, an LLC represented by Sinai Dr. Anwar Mumtaz, seem content to hold onto the property until its value miraculously skyrockets while letting it fall into disrepair. The community is getting absolutely sick of this prime real estate going to waste and being a detriment to further development in Pigtown. This location needs to set the example for other properties down the Boulevard to follow. The only good to come out of this is that the community has rallied against the owners of this property and plan to do everything in their power to make them sell to a reputable developer.

But it’s not just them, take a tour down the Boulevard and you’ll see almost nothing but shells waiting to be renovated and occupied.

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Moving further up the Boulevard, you will see several properties that the city and the BDC went through a lengthy legal battle to take over through eminent domain. They also went through a lengthy RFP process to pick the right developer for these properties. To the best of my knowledge, the developer of the 700 block parcel, New City Partners LLC, backed out and was just recently replaced. The developer of the 900 block parcel, Historical Pigtown Development LLC, has also backed out and BDC is in the process of selecting a new developer. These developers were chosen in August of ‘06 and now 2 1/2 years later we are officially still at square one.

You can read the press release from 2006 here. I remember how excited the community was back then, thinking we were just a year or two away from having a viable main street. The feeling is different now. Even once new developers are selected, residents will be skeptical that any of their plans will actually come to fruition.

With these “anchor” properties sitting vacant, the Boulevard has lost most of the small businesses gutsy enough to try to carve out a little niche for themselves. 771 Washington Blvd alone has had three failed tenants since 2006. First it was Porter’s, then the Yabba Pot, and the last to go was Shahrazad’s. Evelyn’s couldn’t sustain itself either. Even Nick’s (the great greasy cheesesteak place) sold to new ownership. It’s easy to see why, it’s like trying to run a small shop in a mall where the Macy’s closed down, JC Penny is boarded up and has a raccoon living in it, and the movie theater is now full of homeless people.

The effect on the residential real estate market deserves its own series of posts, so I’ll leave that alone for now. But if you live in or care about Pigtown, please get involved and let’s make sure this time around the developers actually develop the parcels they are awarded. You can start by signing up to the Yahoo! group here and participating in the great email chains. You can also check the Citizens of Pigtown calendar here to see if there are any meetings or COP walks coming up.