For the past six years Pastor Evon Horton of the Brownsville Assembly of God has been working with the Paces Foundation to create an Affordable Housing facility for Seniors here in Brownsville on some land that the BAG had purchased decades ago–and unbeknownst to Pastor Horton, it had been purchased with a senior living facility in mind.
About six months ago a small notice appeared on an empty lot at the corner of X Street and DeSoto alerting passers that the county was considering vacating a block of X Street. This concerned us, because of the importance of connectivity in having a safe, community-oriented neighborhood.
Against residents wishes, the county vacated the street, but we were told that we would be involved in the planning of the project and that connectivity would be retained.
Last night we had a historically long, two hour Historic Brownsville Community meeting for which Mark Du Mas, president of the Paces Foundation drove down from Atlanta as well as bringing in his builder, George, and local Florida facilitator, Rick.
Their original plan for the two block facility was to surround it with a six foot gate and hedge. Mark spent an afternoon with Christian Wagley and I after which they went back to the drawing board (remember this is already five years into the project which has included a tens-of-thousands-of-dollars law suite they won against the State of Florida) and removed the hedge, as line of sight was important to us.
We still didn’t want a “gated community” plopped down in the middle of our neighborhood. That seems to work nicely for their Fairfield Manor project up near the County office complex, but not in a walkable, historic, residential neighborhood like this.
So they went back to the drawing board again and removed most of the perimeter fence. At last nights meeting about twenty of us expressed our feedback on a version of “Brownsville Manor” without a fence, but still lacking North-South connectivity from X Street and DeSoto to X Street and Gonzalez.
Mark, Rick and George stayed up half the night and came up with a plan to build two sidewalks which cross on either side of the building, between the parking lots and give us the connectivity so important to us.
The also plan to install street and walkway lighting, which Deputy Chip Simmons says is 80% of neighborhood security and have a memorandum of understanding with Pastor Horton for programming. Between that and the senior programming at the Brownsville Arts & Cultural (community) Center two blocks to the West, I think we will have the kind of community interface we are looking for.
So we’ll have 50 years of guaranteed affordable senior housing to help offset the gentrification that so often accompanies the revitalization we are seeing, and helping to facilitate.
Great work, all.