CITY HEIGHTS STREETS LIKELY TO BE FIXED AFTER ALL

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by Michael Monks 

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City Heights/file photo

The crumbling streets of the City Heights housing project will likely be fully replaced this year. The City was to repair and repave the streets one more time as part of an agreement before handing control of them to the Housing Authority of Covington which would operate them as private streets, giving them the option of keeping undesirable troublemakers out of the neighborhood. But at last week's city commission meeting it was learned that HAC may have changed its mind on wanting control of the streets as it pursued a federal grant to redevelop the site. Following that meeting, the City and HAC had conversations and cleared up any confusion and now they are back on track to fulfill the goals of the resolutions passed by both entities last year in regards to the streets of City Heights. 

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"The (city) engineers have indicated that they would be totally rebuilt with a ten to fifteen year lifespan that gets us to the point to where we would have made a decision on (the future of) City Heights," said Aaron Wolfe-Bertling, executive director of HAC. "There's still some legal processes that yet need to occur that would transfer those streets over and we're confident that they will be repaired this construction season."

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City Commissioner Steve Casper, who also sits on the Board of Commissioners at HAC, said he made several phone calls to the parties involved following last Tuesday's city commission meeting. "Behind the scenes, when I found out (HAC) hadn't had a formal change of heart, I posed to the chairman (of the HAC Board, Glenn Kukla) that I was going to demand one of two things: either we uphold the resolution and take ownership of the streets and the City pave the streets, or if we're reversing, then HAC pay for the streets," Casper said. "But the streets had to get done. It was no longer acceptable to continue its present condition, but fortunately it's going the way it's supposed to go."

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Wolfe-Bertling described the streets at City Heights as suffering from significant erosion. "The sub-base will be replaced and then once that's completed, then the streets will be rebuilt and repaved and new asphalt will be put overt the whole site," Wolfe-Bertling said.
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An order/resolution to move forward with the City Heights streets project could appear on next Tuesday's city commission agenda. Though they were absent from the streets project presentation last Tuesday, City Manager Larry Klein said the City Heights streets were never officially removed from the City's planned repaving work list for this upcoming work cycle because none of the work had officially started. "We felt like there might be some discussion about this following the commission meeting," Klein said. 

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Street repair & replacement important to redevelopment

Another issue is at play with the need to fix the streets of City Heights. The housing project sits high atop a valuable hill with sweeping vistas of the woods and the City. It is the desire of the Housing Authority to redevelop the area either with new public housing or, more likely, a private development. HAC applied for a federal planning grant in 2011 and just missed out on receiving it, but according to Wolfe-Bertling, the HAC Board decided to move forward in developing a plan for the area. Wolfe-Bertling predicts that any significant work is ten to fifteen years away but Commissioner Casper is more optimistic. 

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"I don't believe it will be that long," he said. "We're looking at a number of options and I'm not convinced that we wouldn't be able to find money somewhere along the way. It's an important piece of property that needs attention. It could be private money, depending on circumstances, but overall, it's part of the needed housing strategy that Covington has to put forth, what is the best way to deal with public housing, in a cluster form or in a scattered form, or possibly even beyond the city limits."

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Meanwhile, Wolfe-Bertling said that City Heights and other Covington public housing faces $210 million worth of infrastructure needs over the next ten years. "(HAC is) the utility company in most of City Heights and Latonia Terrace," he said. "We're responsible for the gas lines on the properties and in the case Latonia Terrace, those were built in the 1930s. City Heights, the 1950s. So, it's an ongoing concern that if infrastructure continues to age with reductions in funding from HUD (US Department of Housing & Urban Development), it would be irresponsible if we were not looking for redevelopment opportunities for that site."

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HAC may pursue another federal grant in the near future to speed up the planning process for the City Heights site.