Only within the past two weeks, after controversy involving a drainage pipe boiled over, did hay bales appear across the driveway onto the property.
Those bales looked like they were meant to keep debris on the property. However, the bales were often stacked to the side to let trucks in and out and not put back out after everyone had left. And now they have disappeared altogether.So, once again and with several units yet to start construction, trash is free to blow around the vicinity of Hume and 6th and 5th and Garfield. A few weeks ago I saw one of my neighbors with a leaf-blower walking down the alley and moving all of the Styrofoam, dry wall shrapnel, and workers lunch sacks that had blown out from Schoene Ansicht back up on to the construction site. However, cleaning up after bad neighbors should not be the work of the rest of us. If UP, LLC is really invested in the development of the neighborhood and not solely in squeezing as many bucks as they can as quickly as possible, then why aren't they policing their own sub-contractors?
UP, LLC co-owner Steve Yokley countered S-townWife in the comments section of one of my posts when she complained about construction workers from his site dumping cut-down trees in back of our property:
This is the first time that I've heard about this. If you want to contact the builder directly, call me and I'll put you in contact with him. There are a lot of sub contractors that come and go in a project, and if I don't know about an issue it can't be addressed.There is absolutely no reason why S-townWife should have to take responsibility for Steve Yokley's problems by dealing with the builder herself. And there are no guarantees according to their track record with containing their trash that any of the Schoene Ansicht owners were going to follow-up even if she had called them rather than hauling it back over herself.
So, neighbors: call UP, LLC at the phone numbers they list on Enclave every time I post information that they do not care for readers to see. But do not be under the illusion that whatever issue you have will get follow-up.
UPDATE: Bales are now back.
It's one thing to call out these developers on the stormwater issues, but trash? As of yesterday, trash is visible around other construction sites and vacant lots in Salemtown. Are those sites and property owners being scrutinized as well? Not on Enclave.
ReplyDeleteIf only brave "anonymous" commenters would look back through my two years of posts, they would see that I have a track record of documenting in picture and word unkempt properties in the North End and Bicentennial Mall area. I am proudest of a tire dump a couple of years ago that got cleaned up thanks to publicity that started on Enclave. But I am only one individual with only so much time to devote to this little side project.
ReplyDeleteAnd, then again, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. I didn't start reporting on Schoene Ansicht's roving trash problem months ago when it started happening, probably because I was focusing time and energy on other problems, and it was one among Salemtown's many. But then came word of other problems at 6th and Hume: stormwater drainage directed toward a neighbor's low-lying property and the failure of UP, LLC to follow the Council approved plan, which it itself had originally submitted, and failing to obtain permission from Planning for the changes.
Some tell me that the UP, LLC owners think that I am just biased against their developments. If that was the case, then I have wasted my time writing a letter on their behalf to the Planning Commission, promoting their plans at the Salemtown Neighbors Oktoberfest booth, providing them free publicity on Enclave last year by posting their plans for Salemtown Townhouses, Schoene Ansicht and Salem Gardens, and working with Salem Gardens' Zeitlin realtor who called me requesting historical and community info about the area. If I was biased, I wouldn't have wasted a single moment on any of that.
No, I did not have issues with the co-owners until I found out that I was mislead by them regarding Schoene Ansicht. And posting on the blowing trash yesterday instead of months ago was meant to show this continuing pattern of deception and betrayal of good faith. I could just as easily be criticized by other neighbors for waiting months to post on the UP, LLC's trash problem.
Are there other trash problems in Salemtown that require attention? Yes, there are, and I'd like eventually to get to them. But I triage the problems as they come in and frankly Schoene Ansicht's trash problem is not just one among many other Salemtown trash problems; it is also another brick in a wall that UP, LLC has built between some neighbors and itself in 2007.