PEORIA, Ill. – The Peoria City Council has accepted a grant to help tear down abandoned and unsafe buildings in the city.
Council on Tuesday night unanimously approved a $475,000 grant from the Illinois Housing Development Authority. The city was previously awarded $712,000 in grant funding from the IHDA for the same purpose.
The money will be used to fund around 40 demolition projects, which Community Development Director Joe Dulin says adds to a lengthy list of houses torn down.
“Over the last ten years, we’ve torn down about 950 vacant and abandoned houses in our community. But really, the remarkable thing in the last three years, we’ve torn down about 450 of those,” Dulin said.
The houses will be torn down in the 61603 and 61605 zip codes in the East Bluff and South Side of Peoria.
Dulin says the goal has been to catch up on demolitions and tear down houses in clusters, to pave the way for the land to be used for new housing development.
At-Large Councilman John Kelly used the opportunity to urge the city to consider more single-family housing developments, rather than multi-family housing.
“I wish we would have a little bit more concentration on what really builds a neighborhood, instead of how can we get investors from New Jersey to come here and make riskless investments,” Kelly said.
Council members Denise Jackson and Tim Riggenbach pushed back, with Riggenbach saying the city has learned lessons from past developments.
Jackson also urged City Manager Patrick Urich to push IDOT to follow through on a promise to upgrade Howett St. and Lincoln Avenue on the South Side, with Jackson adding that IDOT planned to use $44 million from President Biden’s infrastructure bill for the project. She argues infrastructure improvement will help developers come in.
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