During a brief session of city council on Tuesday, March 4, Alderwoman Erin Conley of Ward 8 raised the topic of the Bally Vaughn Apartments to the city’s corporation counsel.
The dilapidated 1960’s-era Bally Vaughn Apartments located along West Washington Street have been an ongoing headache for the city for years: the buildings were notorious as a hotbed of crime and decay prior to their shuttering over 10 years ago. A carousel of successive city councils has attempted to address the property, which in 2017 was bought by a Florida-based rental management company, to no avail.
Since that purchase the decay of the complex has only progressed. The owners have floated proposals for improvements to the horseshoe many times since 2017, only to be met with skepticism from both the council and the apartments’ neighbors. The City of Springfield had multiple administrative court cases pending with the owners when a recent asbestos exposure brought state regulators into the picture — since then, the city’s cases have sat frozen. While the Illinois government hounds the out-of-state owners for abatement at the property, progressive weather events continue to worsen material conditions at the apartments.
“These have been a – I’m going to go with ‘hot mess,’ as my polite words for the day,” declared Conley. “It’s a situation that the neighborhood and the schools have been dealing with for a number of years… most recently around this asbestos violation.”
Ald. Ralph Hanauer of Ward 10 concurred. The former Playhouse daycare, which is bundled together with the apartment complex on the same parcel, hosts a number of tall dead trees which both Conley and Hanauer observed are progressively decomposing. “There’s some big limbs that have fallen, and I’m surprised they haven’t fallen on Washington,” said Hanauer.
With the complex sitting in a school zone, Hanauer worried the rotting trees could easily threaten passing students: “You’ve got kids walking to and from all the schools over there. Boy, all it would take is for one of those branches to fall, and that would be very bad.”
“Now that there’s work actually being done, and there’s a dialogue between the owner and the state, we can work to see if taking those down can be accelerated through the state’s oversight,” explained Springfield Corporation Counsel Moredock.
“We weren’t allowed to go on the premises anymore until the asbestos was abated — the owner has entered into a contract with M&O Environmental company, so there will be individuals moving in and out,” said Moredock. “This is still being overseen by the state, not the city. But once that’s done, we can then go back to our inspection process and continue work through our administrative court.”
The owners, Moredock told the council, remain insistent they wish to rehabilitate the 60-year-old Bally Vaughn complex once the state’s asbestos case is cleared.
“How long is that abatement estimated to take?” asked Ward 2 Ald. Shawn Gregory.
“I don’t have that for this council,” replied Moredock. “I can get that information and circulate it.”
Conley congratulated Moredock for the city’s persistence in addressing the Bally Vaughn case, but urged the city’s attorney to furnish the council with more information on the case. She echoed community worries about a lack of public information on the litigation; the property’s neighbors remain in the dark about the scale of the asbestos release, as well as whatever plans might be underway to remedy the apartments.
“I want to make sure that we, as a city, see through to a full mitigation,” Conley told the council. “Not just this asbestos case, but everything else with those buildings — they have potential to be a really great asset. We know we need housing, and I certainly would like to see affordable housing developed in that part of my ward.
“But I also want to see it done safely. I want to see it done in a way that respects the neighbors that have been living with a huge mess, right in their front-, side-, and backyards.”
