Residents await UA evictions

Blocks of houses to be razed near campus for parking lot

— Nancy Deyo has called No. 27 N. Court St. in Fayetteville home for the past 7 1/2 years.

“I love the area,” she said recently from her tiny duplex in a tree-lined neighborhood bordering the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville’s sports complexes. Up the hill from Razorback Road, Court Street ends in a cul-de-sac nestled in a forested area, with pricier single-family homes farther to the west.

A family of owls nests in nearby trees, Deyo said. A stadium light pole visible above the treetops looking east is the only sign fromDeyo’s front yard that John McDonnell Field is close by.

Deyo is among more than a dozen tenants on four Fayetteville streets who must move out of their rented homes within roughly three to six months because the university has bought the properties.

The Fayetteville campus bought several duplexes, triplexes and houses on North Brenda Drive, North Court Street and West Walton Street on March 24, 2011, said UA spokesman John Diamond. This spring, the university bought up one side of the street on nearby South Graham Avenue.

It was able to purchase all of the property outright from the owners, without use of eminent-domain powers, he said.

Long-term use for the properties has not been determined, he said, but in the short term the land could be used for parking. “Scholarship Parking” signs went up on one side of Graham Avenue shortly before the first or second home football game, residents said. Diamond said the Razorback Foundation controls parking in the areas marked as Scholarship Parking, premium space reserved for donors during football games.

“We have not decided the scope of the demolition and, therefore, do not know whether or not our properties will be cleared of structures all at once,” Diamond said. “However, all of the buildings will be demolished eventually. We do not want to put any additional money into their maintenance.”

VACANT UNITS

The university’s purchase included 18 units on Court Street, eight on Brenda Drive, six on Walton Street, and five houses and two duplexes on Graham Avenue’s east side, Diamond said.

All but one of the Graham Avenue structures will be demolished. The exception is one duplex that’s being used by UA’s Transit and Parking office.

In all, 13 structures remain occupied out of 41 units the university bought.

Deyo said a number of people who lived on the four streets when UA bought the property have since moved. Some who have moved there since the purchases have done so with the understanding that they’ll need to move within a few months, the residents and UA said.

“Most of the vacant units have been vacant ever since or shortly after we purchased the properties,” Diamond said.

A few residents complained in recent news reports that UA’s property manager, Providence Property Management, hasn’t given them much information about the demolition timetable. Diamond said UA hasn’t settled on a timetable nor has it decided whether the land will ultimately be used for new buildings,parking lots or a parking deck.

No tenants have been given notice to vacate, Diamond said.

The university has a legal right with the property to terminate a lease with 30 days’ notice but will work with tenants to give them lead time, Diamond said.

“We fully expect that we’ll be able to give them more than 30 days’ notice,” he said.

John Maes rented No. 10 S. Graham Ave. in August.

“I don’t even know what they’re going to do with it,” Maes said. “I know they’re going to tear it down as early as January. But I knew that moving in.”

Maes, 29, who works at the Art Emporium, said he signed a five-month contract that ends Jan. 1, with the understanding that if he’s allowed to stay past that, it would be a monthto-month arrangement.

“It’s kind of a drag,” he said of the prospect of moving again so soon. “But I’ll be OK.”

Michael Catlin, 54, said he moved to No. 15 Court St. in July in an oral “month-tomonth” arrangement.

His understanding at the time was that he’d need to move out “around Christmastime,” he said. He was planning to move back to Chicago around then, anyway.

“The actual block is really, really nice,” Catlin said of Court Street, but the duplex itself “could use some upkeep. The ceiling leaks if it rains really, really hard.” And when it gets cold, the windows are drafty.

Other than that, he said, his place is nice and he can use UA’s bus system or ride a bicycle to his job at the nearby Walton Arts Center.

The Brenda Drive units, nearly all vacant now, have some obvious signs of wear on rooftops and siding.

PARKING CASH

The neighborhood has already lost some inhabitants and a tradition that was part of living there.

“I used to do game-day parking - we had such fun doing that,” Deyo said.

Deyo said residents charged gamegoers to let them park their cars in the driveways and yards. There was a sense of neighborhood camaraderie associated with parking cars during football season, she said.

But by the second home football game this fall, it was clear UA would no longer allow the practice. Scholarship Parking signs appeared on Graham Avenue, signaling that UA wanted cars to park there instead.

Catlin, referring to Deyo as the “elder statesman on our block,” said he learned from her that each unit in the past could make about $200 per game parking cars.

“So I geared up for it,” he said. “But that didn’t work out.”

“The day before the first Razorback football game, the Razorback Foundation came out and told us we couldn’t park people for money,” Catlin recalled.

He took a job with the Razorback Foundation parking cars, he said.

“The first two games we worked like 9 hours, and the last game we worked like 4 hours,” Catlin said, but it wasn’t nearly enough to match the $200 per game that he had hoped to make parking cars outside his duplex.

Diamond said UA prohibits tenants from charging for parking on university-owned property.

CITY MATTERS

The cost of demolishing the properties, removing the debris and readying the area for parking is projected at $700,000, Diamond wrote in an e-mail. That’s far less than the cost of renovating the housing units, he said.

Besides, UA needs more space for parking on the west side of campus “now and in the future,” he said.

Fayetteville’s development services director, Jeremy Pate, said UA doesn’t have to go through the city’s Planning Commission for approval to raze the residences and build parking. The city doesn’t always even hear about university projects.

“Sometimes we never do, unless it’s under construction,” he said.

But the city and UA have improved communication in recent years. Chancellor G. David Gearhart and Mayor Lioneld Jordan meet regularly, and the city has a new Town and Gown Advisory Committee that held its first meeting last month.

The UA purchases near Razorback Road seem to be part of westward expansion plans that are part of UA’s master plan, Pate said.

Nonetheless, there are questions and concerns with any large acquisition of property, Pate said.

Can the city’s infrastructure support the proposed new use? How much property tax revenue will the city lose when an exempt public entity buys up property? How will the inevitable increase in student traffic change things? Will the new use degrade or improve a neighborhood?

Sometimes such purchases can improve a neighborhood.

“Some of the time, these neighborhoods aren’t always the most high-quality,” Pate said. “Sometimes they’re aging, and the university can improve what was there,” particularly if the properties were rentals.

“The life span of a singlefamily house could be 150 years, but you don’t see that with a multifamily property,” he said.

Deyo said she is not certain where she’ll move when the university says time’s up, but she doesn’t plan to buy a house.

“At my age, a house is just not a good investment,” Deyo said. She expects that she and her son, who lives across the street from her, will look for another rental.

She said it would be nice if her move could wait until spring.

“I put that all in,” Deyo said, using her cane to point to perennials in the front yard, where colorful little windmills blow in the breeze. “Because if I can catch them when they’re coming up, I can take them with us.”

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 17 on 11/18/2012

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