Cleaning up Broadway

If trouble was looking for headquarters on Iowa City's Southeast side, it could do worse than choose the Broadway Condominiums.

The 108-unit complex at 1958-60 Broadway St. is home for dozens of low-income families. In recent years, it's also been a favored hangout for thugs.

The complex has seen more than its share of crime - drug deals, domestic assaults, fights, vandalism - you name it.

But it all reached a boiling point just over a year ago, when 64-year-old John Versypt, who owned a few Broadway Condominium units, was shot and killed - in broad daylight - as he was trying to fix up the place.

The retired sheet metal mechanic owned a few of the units. He'd been hanging “no loitering” and “no smoking” signs in public areas of Building C. Neighbors found his body by the back door - his screwdriver, and the gun that killed him, at his feet.

His murder, coming as it did on the heels of an explosive summer, outraged and concerned neighbors. They rallied: Formed Neighborhood Watch groups, kept kids busy with Neighborhood Center programs and a new Wetherby Park splashpad.

Property managers installed security cameras and remodeled door and entryways to make them safer.

Even so, in the first six months of 2010, police still were called to the complex an average of once per day, according to a recent Gazette report.

Iowa City Police planted themselves in the middle of the action last fall, opening a substation in Pepperwood Plaza - just across the street from the condominiums.

But there's a lot more work to do.

About $6 million worth, according to Southgate. That's how much they think it will cost to buy the condo units they don't own and give the complex a thorough rehabilitation.

It's a project similar to one they undertook a few years ago at nearby Woodlands. Iowa City Police Crime Prevention Officer Jorey Bailey confirmed for me Tuesday that police calls dropped dramatically after Southgate cleaned up that 64-unit property.

The city's Housing and Community Development Commission wants city councilors to help out with $900,000 in federal Community Development Block Grant funds.

As housing commission Chairman Mike McKay said, it just might be “the city's best shot to do something really positive in that neighborhood.”

The idea is not without detractors. And they're right - it's a lot of public money to throw at a private company.

But rehabbing those condos stands to do a world of public good.

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Jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net

; (319) 339-3154.