On Monday we brought you a story about a local effect of President Trump’s executive order repealing the Biden Administration’s Environmental Justice program. That’s within the Environmental Protection Agency. That could threaten federal money to clean up the abandoned and contaminated South Bend Range site at 133 Cherry Street.
Some of that funding remains uncertain now, but the South Bend Redevelopment Commission plans to address demolition of the buildings at its meeting Thursday. The commission will consider the city’s request to earmark $1.3 million to take down the buildings once the EPA cleans up the site.
Anne Mannix is a longtime nonprofit developer of affordable housing in the neighborhood surrounding the site. She also chairs the Environmental Justice committee of the Near West Side Neighborhood Association.
Mannix says she’s grateful the city is making the site a priority.
"There are environmental issues and then there's people that sleep in the building, it's hazardous," Mannix says. "And the bricks are falling down on the building into the street. And then nothing can be developed there because of the environmental issues. It doesn't make sense to redevelop any of the vacant land until all of that is cleared up."
