ADVERTISEMENT
`Eyesore` Mo. Homes to be Renovated as First Responder Training Site
Nov. 15--FLORISSANT -- In a transformation characterized by Mayor Thomas Schneider as turning lemons into lemonade, an eyesore that has bedeviled the city and neighbors for eight years is about to reincarnated as a training site for first responders.
The city announced last week that the five Fleurissant Parc Place town homes will soon be used by the Florissant Valley Fire Protection District, Florissant police and the Black Jack Fire Protection District to develop and enhance public safety skills.
Employees of the three agencies have already started the process of removing and boarding up windows in the five units that represented the initial building phase of an upscale town home development that went belly up during the recession.
Florissant in a written statement called the conversion a solution to a "problem that has been a source of annoyance" for the city and nearby residents alike.
The three-story town homes have stood, unfinished, at the intersection where North New Florissant Road ends at Carla Drive since 2008.
"I'm sick of looking at it," a Carla Drive resident told the Post-Dispatch in October. "We all (complain) about it, but it doesn't do any good."
The town homes eight years ago represented the beginning of a project developers viewed as a complement to the neighboring Kensington Square Apartments and a subdivision of single family homes.
Instead, the recession intervened, leaving the unpainted town homes exposed to the elements and the remainder of the eight-acre Fleurissant Parc Place site undeveloped.
Steven and Milton Goldenberg, the owners of Golden Management -- the firm that manages Kensington Square and other area apartment projects -- purchased the Fleurissant Parc site four years ago with the objective of filling the property with senior housing.
Those plans have been slowed by missed deadlines coupled with miscommunication with the city.
Schneider credited the Goldenbergs on Monday for their role in transforming the town homes into a facility to serve the public good.
The Goldenbergs and Florissant building officials agree that the town homes are structurally sound.
Soon, the tattered exteriors will be coated with 200 gallons of paint applied by union painters working with All-American Painting Contractors, located in North County.
Union electricians with the KB Electric Company of Florissant have agreed to work on lighting and security systems.
Meridian Waste Management in Bridgeton is donating a construction trash container.
Steve Giegerich --314-725-6758
@stevegiegerich on Twitter
Copyright 2016 - St. Louis Post-Dispatch
