Church to build on former site of blighted house

MARION - What was a blighted house is on track to become a parsonage.

The house at 606 Grant St., in Marion's north end, used to be an "eyesore," said Pastor Gregory Draper of the Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church, but now he hopes the site will be a beacon of light.

"Now we are going to resurrect a new house up on it to help the community out," Draper said. "Once we start showing that the value of the community is going up, people will take ownership of their properties, keep their properties up."

The Grant Street house was torn down last year by the Marion County Land Reutilization Corporation, better known as the county land bank, through a state program meant to stabilize property values by tearing down blighted or vacant houses and to prevent future foreclosures.

"That was our first teardown, and it’ll be the first property we’re getting rid of," said Don Davis, director of the county land bank.

It marks the first property that has cycled completely through the land bank. It came into the land bank's ownership as a blighted property, went through demolition and now has left the land bank's possession to be put to a new use. The church received the deed for the church Friday.

The county lank bank started in 2016 and has since acquired 34 properties, mostly through tax foreclosures, which either have been demolished or are slated for demolition through the state's Neighborhood Initiative Program.

But demolition by itself is not enough to revitalize neighborhoods and help property values rebound.

Susan Wachter, a professor of real estate and finance at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, found that vacant lots can hurt property values if they are neglected, subtracting 20 percent of a next-door home's value compared with similar homes further away.

"Vacant lots left in the wake of ... demolition often have significant and adverse effects on a neighborhood’s quality of life, attracting refuse and vandals and creating a perception of impaired public safety," reads a 2007 working paper authored by Wachter and two others.

However, Wachter found that lots can boost property values if steps are taken to beautify them by planting trees and bushes or putting in benches, sidewalks or fencing.

"Our results indicate that these efforts almost entirely reverse the negative impact of adjacency to neglected vacant lots resulting in a gain in value of 19 percent," the working paper says.

The Neighborhood Initiative Program has encouraged program participants like the Marion County land bank to think about ways their properties can be used to better neighborhoods.

Draper, the pastor, said that the Grant Street site fits into the church's vision for the neighborhood.

Since he arrived at the church, he said, the church had invested more than $100,000 to replace its roof and build a parking lot outside the church, 475 E. Fairground St.

The development plans don't stop there, with the church not only planning to build the parsonage on the Grant Street site, but temporary housing on the corner of Fairground and Grant streets, where the church hopes to help homeless families transition into permanent homes.

"If the pastor's living in the community in which they serve, it helps the community," said Draper, who has been commuting to the church from Columbus.

Meanwhile, Davis said he knows of interested buyers for five other lots that the land bank owns, including a church that wants to start a garden on Garden Street.

svolpenhei@gannett.com

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