CRA: Some city-owned facilities are a mess

A design review application before the Community Redevelopment Agency from the city's utilities department to complete construction of a pole barn at 454 N. Franklin St. may have opened up a can of worms.

Discussion led to how unattractive it and other city-owned sites are.

Three city-owned facilities are located in or near residential neighborhoods: the water division and sewer division, public works and the vehicle maintenance shop.

Jack York, the city's wastewater collections supervisor, explained that the pole barn project went back four years and that a slab and the poles were already in place.

All they needed to do was put on the roof, but they ran into a problem when they learned some of the land was part of an old CSX railroad easement.

The construction came to a halt.

The property was finally turned over to the city by the county on Sept. 15 for a sum of $10, and York said he hoped to get the barn finished in order to store some trucks and other city equipment there.

CRA Chairman Gene Brenner strongly suggested that the city could do a better job with some kind of landscaping there.

A visit to Franklin Street on Tuesday showed 10 iron structural steel I-beams rising upward from a concrete slab into exposed cross-beams where the unfinished pole barn awaits completion.

Weathered wooden boards and pieces of plywood were piled near an exposed chain-link fence.

What looked like an old newspaper pinned partially under the pile fluttered in the wind.

Further back into the property were piles of unused bricks. One stack was next to a concrete shed that needed fresh paint.

Board members discussed the unsightliness of the city-owned Public Works Department facility that borders with a residential neighborhood on Hawthorne Drive, as well as the storage facility on North Eucalyptus Street.

What was not discussed was the driveway to the city's vehicle maintenance shop.

To the right of the property were piles of pipes and uprooted fire hydrants. There was no fence or landscape buffer to hide the baby blue pipe stacks from nearby homes, both next to the driveway and on Cypress Street.

Cypress Street resident Tristan Heiss said he was upset at what he has to look at every day. He's got a view of the pipes and a second Quonset hut at the motor vehicle maintenance shop, which is also visible from the Sebring Parkway.

"They're fining me $200 per day," said Heiss, speaking about a code enforcement violation on his property. It is for rubbish and trash and unlicensed vehicles, according to Sebring Police Cmdr. Steve Carr.

Heiss was asked if the unkempt appearance of the vehicle maintenance property bothered him.

"I did complain," he said. "I asked them about this (he said pointing at piles of lumber and other materials he claimed the city has left for two years). I didn't want that stuff blowing into my yard during a hurricane.

"Those pipes! There are rats living in those pipes."

A nearby neighbor confirmed he had a rat problem in the neighborhood each time the city failed to mow a field next door to the piles of pipes.

Heiss said he's been cited about unlicensed and inoperable vehicles in his yard.

"I went down and licensed them," he said. "They made me get into each car and move them (to show they were operable). I didn't see them go down the street making anyone else prove their cars were operable.

"The city can make me build a fence and put my cars behind a fence, but they can leave all their stuff out where everyone has to look at it."

When two different zoned properties such as industrial and residential abut each other, code enforcement ordinances that apply to one may not apply to the other, said Carr.

Planting vegetative buffers costs money as does installing irrigation, he said. Some businesses may not be able to afford that, he said.

The CRA ultimately voted unanimously Monday to approve the application for permitting and to forward it to the council with a recommendation that the project be forwarded to the Tree Board to address landscaping around the Franklin Street side of the old Sebring Power Station property.

In a memo to City Administrator Scott Noethlich, dated Oct. 27, CRA Executive Director Pete Pollard wrote that the CRA does not believe that the proposed pole barn should be required to have landscaping in the immediate proximity of the building as there is no landscaping within the perimeter of the fenced in utilities property now.

"However, the CRA does believe that the perimeter of the property along Park Street and on Franklin Street should be landscaped in such a way that it creates a vegetative buffer around the complex," Pollard wrote.

"This could be done with hedges, trees or the treatment to be utilized along the Sebring Parkway fence. That treatment which was approved by the Tree Board, called for the planting of Confederate Jasmine along the fence line. The jasmine vine would grow across the fence, turning it into a visual buffer."

The board members agreed that with all the emphasis made on landscaping, any standards that apply to the private sector should also apply to the city, Pollard said Tuesday.