New Life Envisioned For Shuttered Apartment Complex

Rosemary Atkins sees beyond the broken window panes, plywood-covered doors, crumbling roofs and weed-choked yards.

Brooks Villas, a shuttered 61-unit apartment complex off Mondon Hill Road just north of downtown Brooksville, looks broken down now.

But every effort should be made to resurrect the affordable housing complex that once housed some of the city's poorest residents, said Atkins, a member of the Hernando County Housing Authority and the county's Affordable Housing Advisory Committee.

"Sixty-one families could be living here," Atkins said Tuesday as she stood in front of one of the complex's single-story buildings. "This is an opportunity and it needs to be done."

City officials agree, said Community Development Director Bill Geiger said.

But the site, vacant since the summer, creeps closer to condemnation each day. The city must see progress on the part of the property owner toward improving the property or the buildings will have to come down, Geiger said.

"We need to see the permits to come in and rehab it," Geiger said. "As long as things continue in a positive fashion, we'll continue to work with them."

Jerry Davis is the general partner of Southland Property Management, based in Valdosta, Ga. Davis and his partners acquired the property in 2005.

The 10-acre complex, built in 1980 with U.S. Department of Agriculture funding, was in bad shape three years ago, Davis said.

Some buildings were already vacant and uninhabitable. USDA required the remainder of the residents, who paid rents on a sliding scale based on their income, to move out last summer.

To repair the place, Davis said, "has been the goal since we took it over."

But Southland doesn't have the capital to do it, Davis told local officials Tuesday.

Davis met with Geiger, Atkins, and Lewis Chandler, the city's building official to tour the site, talk about whether the 12 buildings can be saved and if so, how to pay for the renovations.

A preliminary engineering report indicated that at least a few of the buildings are settling, causing cracks to form in the walls. That can likely be repaired and the buildings shored up, Chandler said.

But the roofs are in bad shape and mold could be rampant, he said.

Either way, "It's a major rehab" project, Chandler said.

USDA has offered the company a $975,000, low-interest loan to put toward the project.

But the cost to rehabilitate the complex could run substantially higher than that, if it can be saved at all. Davis declined to speculate on just how much more, and wouldn't discuss how much capital he might have to put toward the rehabilitation.

Later, Davis met with County Administrator David Hamilton and Health and Human Services Director Jean Rags to find out whether the project could be eligible for a share of the federal money Hernando County could receive as part of the Neighborhood Stabilization Program, created to help local governments deal with the foreclosure crisis.

If approved, Hernando is slated to receive some $6 million in funds from the program aimed at improving blighted areas and repairing abandoned housing in areas with high foreclosure rates.

The Brooks Villas project could be considered for some of that money, Rags said.

But the county is required to use the dollars to make the greatest impact in parts of the county with the most pressing needs, Rags said. It's unclear whether Brooks Villas lies in one of those areas, she said.

"There a number of things we could be doing, and this is just one project," she said.

Still, that won't necessarily preclude the county from providing some of the dollars to help rehabilitate an affordable housing apartment, she said.

The county will be evaluating projects over the next several months and hopes to have a plan submitted to the state by March. Ultimately, it will be up to the county commission to decide which projects suggested by county staff will receive money.