May 28, 2013 [Crain’s Cleveland Business]
A coalition led by the Cuyahoga County Land Reutilization Corp., commonly known as the Cuyahoga Land Bank, has completed the distribution of nearly $41 million in federal stimulus money that was awarded in 2010 to help stabilize Cleveland-area neighborhoods.
The Cuyahoga Land Bank was the lead applicant and program manager for a consortium that included the city of Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, and the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority. The grant under the federal Neighborhood Stabilization program awarded to the consortium was one of the largest per capita allocations in the country.
The consortium used the money for rehabilitation, demolition and land reutilization to combat the negative effects of the foreclosure crisis, which produced a large number of vacant and abandoned properties.
“We are very happy to have been able to find opportunities to positively impact the safety, housing values and quality of life” in various neighborhoods, said Gus Frangos, president of the Cuyahoga Land Bank, in a press release.
Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson said not only did the city make progress in taking down dangerous abandoned properties, “but we were also able to rescue and rehabilitate over 300 other homes.”
Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald said the county used the federal money to leverage millions of dollars in private dollars “while expanding the boundaries of University Circle, replacing vacant land with both high-end and affordable apartments and demolishing some of Cuyahoga’s worst properties.”