Azalea Park Apartments’ owners have made some improvements to the low-income housing development, but a lot of work is still needed to bring the complex up to code.
That’s what Augusta-Richmond County Commissioners learned at last week’s meeting, when Azalea Park Apartments and W.C. Ervin Towers made it onto the agenda once again.
Davis Dunaway, of the Hull Barrett law firm, spoke March 30 on behalf of Azalea Park’s owners, Sureste Partners LLC, based out of Atlanta. He told commissioners that while some problems still exist, the complex has taken great strides to bring the buildings into compliance.
The Azalea Park Apartments, located at 1814 Fayetteville Drive, has received multiple code violation citations over the past six months, including plumbing backups leading to flooded units, fire damage caused by suspect wiring, sewage seeping into a nearby creek as well as rat and bed bug infestations.
According to Dunaway, the owners have filed a plan of action with code enforcement and have launched an engineering study to fix all of the plumbing problems. Dunaway said some of the plumbing issues have been mitigated, but that engineers ran into problems when they discovered repairs and rerouting made by the previous owners.
“The prior owners, at some point in some of the units, came in and rerouted the kitchen plumbing, and they took out of service the original lines. Those were issues that were not in code and not permitted,” Dunaway said.
Dunaway said the engineers had to borrow a special camera to be able to see into the improvised lines and determine a permanent solution. The plumbing engineers were only waiting for code enforcement to issue the necessary permits to complete the work.
Augusta Planning and Development Interim Director Carla Delaney acknowledged the company had been moving forward and working closely with her department, but also told commissioners she still had reservations about the company’s ability to prioritize taking care of all of the issues present, rather than just plumbing.
“We still have concerns about the 38 code enforcement issues that remain,” Delaney said.
The Commission agreed to give the owners more time to complete the list of violations as long as code enforcement provided regular updates.
Meanwhile, commissioners only received a report about W.C.Ervin Towers as the body has little authority over the downtown complex.
The Commission remains stymied about what to do with the city-owned public housing unit.
The senior living complex, located at 1365 Laney Walker Blvd., has faced similar issues as Azalea Park, and the city has received complaints about broken lightbulbs in hallways and stairwells, broken pull cords and plumbing issues that cause flooding.
According to resident Joseph Williams, the plumbing in the building has frequent problems, and leaks have gotten so severe that the sheetrock in many of the units has become waterlogged, causing warping and even collapse.
“Every time the lady who lives upstairs takes a shower, the water comes into my apartment,” Williams said in a March 1 article in The Augusta Press.
Unlike Azalea Park, which is privately owned, W.C. Ervin Towers is technically owned by the city and managed by the Augusta Housing Authority using state funding. The mayor of Augusta appoints all the authority seats, but the authority apparently does not have to answer the mayor or the commission.
According to Delaney, the fire department can inspect the property, but code enforcement has no jurisdiction, and all they can do is direct complainants to contact the authority. Those facts did not sit well with District 4 Commissioner Alvin Mason who said the commission needs to do whatever it takes to hold the authority accountable.
While the authority was given notice, a representative was not present at the meeting.
“Even if we need to get our state representatives involved to get the appropriate laws on the books to address these types of issues because we are trying to govern and we can’t even go in and inspect what is in our city, there is something fundamentally wrong with that,” Mason said.
Scott Hudson is the senior reporter for The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com
