SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (KY3) – A junk property with a troubled past in Springfield has been demolished. Now, city leaders are moving forward with new measures to address problem properties.
“There’s been about seven or eight fires total since we’ve lived here,” neighbor Jennifer Trogdon said.
Jennifer and her husband, Sean, have lived next door to a junk property near Douglas Avenue and Madison Street for about 18 years.
But it wasn’t until much later that they started experiencing problems at home. “Probably the main problem when it all started has been the last 12 to 14 years,” Jennifer says.
There have been all kinds of problems over the years, the Trogdons say.
They saw people coming in and out of the house, drug needles, and even the shooting death of a man there in June.
“I haven’t felt comfortable in this house for a long time,” they both agreed. “Because of the town we live in, when our kids were young they wouldn’t even let us out in the front yard or in the backyard,” Sean said.
As a result, the couple contacted the police and asked the city to take action.
“I was exchanging emails with someone in this city and they were asking how long it would take to recover after the recent big fires, and they were like, well, we don’t have I don’t know, but they said it would take 18 to 24 months.”
“Our overall goal is to reduce the number of nuisance violations citywide,” said Martin Gugel, interim director of Building and Development Services. “We understand that this process will take too long, and we have heard feedback from people. We understand their concerns about having to follow city ordinances and state law throughout the process.” ..You can go through some emergency provisions, but mostly there’s just a process that you have to go through.”
Crews recently demolished the house. However, the city did not have to pay for the construction costs.
“In that particular property, we were in the process of doing that, but the property owner actually removed the building, so there was no need for us to intervene.”
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