NSBNEWS.net photo by Henry Frederick. The former Dunn Lumber property, now owned by the city of New Smyrna Beach at a cost of $417,000 for nearly a year, is no closer to being the "gateway" to the city.
It stands at the corner of West Canal Street and U.S. 1, a symbol of ugliness that greets the tourists those on Canal Street are so eager to draw, spending tens of thousands of dollars on Christmas tree lights and a 20-foot artificial tree.
But even with all the glitz and glitter of holiday lights, Dunn Lumber stands as a symbol of the city's albatross. It's the white elephant that won't go away. It's the structure of decay.
You've got an ongoing streetscape to the west and Christmas ornaments to the east, but there stands the symbol of a bygone era, the former Dunn Lumber site.
You'd think city officials would be falling all over themselves to do something to make it better. How about starting by cleaning it up: After all, the city has a couple hundred thousand in federal "Brownfield" grants to dig up the arsenic-tainted dirt?
So why hasn't it happened? What the was the rush in purchasing Dunn in the first place at full-market value in the middle of a recession only to have it remain as if time stood still?
The city just had to have the parcel -- as tiny as it is -- with the former mayor chastizing her elected colleagues not to "quibble" about the cost.
In fact, at that very meeting last January, Community Redevelopment Director Kevin Fall said he would get to work right away to get the site cleaned up. That didn't happen, though a couple of months ago, the city put out bids to see if anyone wanted to develop the site.
But guess what? There were no takers. What a surprise.
Then-Mayor Sally Mackay gave no public explanation for purchasing it except to say it was the gateway to the city. Mayor Adam Barringer, who won election over the first-term incumbent, told me last night he still doesn't know why the city had to buy the property, at such a huge cost, with no other takers and no previous administration willing to acquire it prior to the last one going back a decade.
During the campaign, it became laughable that perhaps the land could be used as a turning lane by the state. Hello, the state is broke. And if that were the case, why not just let the state acquire the land through eminent domain? The site could have been had at a fraction of the cost.
Earlier this month, the City Commission and the CRA met jointly to discuss projects that could be funded. Of course, Dunn Lumber wasn't even mentioned, though ther ewas a reference to the gateway to the city that didn't score high marks. And Bob Tolley brought up Dunn Lumber at the last City Commission meeting, drawing little, if any response.
The City Commission has a "visioning" session planned for all-day Wednesday at the Atlantic Center for the Arts at a cost of $7,000, similar to one that was held last June.
Mayor Barringer said Dunn Lumber will be discussed Wednesday. Of course, it was discussed last June, but nothing was done in the interim.
Barringer, a principal in his family's Barringer Construction, understands the "broken window theory," which is that if you allow something to break, like a window, it gets worse.
Well, guess what? Yet another window was smashed at Dunn, this time on the side facing U.S. 1, sometime Sunday during the day. A large sheet of plywood was nailed over it, accentuating its ghetto look.
Now how's that for a gateway into the city?