Joliet Mayor: Fairview Housing To Be Demolished Soon

JOLIET, IL - Mayor Bob O'Dekirk and representatives from the Joliet Housing Authority walked the city's Fairview Public Housing Complex on Friday night on The Hill to bring a message that Fairview's days are numbered. Demolition of the large public housing complex should begin in August or September. Once Fairview is torn down, nothing will be rebuilt here.

Joliet's Housing Authority intends to leave the public housing complex land as open space.

Fairview was built around 1968. The Joliet Housing Authority is providing rental vouchers to all of Fairview's displaced residents, to allow them to move anywhere in the country. Some residents told Joliet Patch they plan to move to the city's west side while others expressed a strong desire to leave Joliet altogether.

Three days ago, two of the townhouses were pelted by a semi-automatic weapon. The bullets also struck at least one car. The shooting occurred around 2:05 p.m. just as little children were returning home from school on their school buses.

"This was a real hot spot," O'Dekirk told Joliet Patch at Fairview's public housing development Friday night. "As a police officer there were things we wouldn't do. You were always encouraged not to do a traffic stop inside of the housing projects. Turning the lights on was just like drawing people and drawing problems. I worked up here for most of my ten years. I was up in this neighborhood. Over the years, just a lot of issues and a lot of problems."

RELATED: Fairview Sprayed By Lots Of Bullets

Rarely a year in Joliet goes by without multiple murders taking place at Fairview.

On New Year's Eve, a pair of teenagers, 15-year-old Victor J. Arroyo and 17-year-old Aliyah M. Salazar, were gunned down on Rosalind Avenue shortly before midnight. They were sitting in a car with three other people.

Last September, Miles Stallings, 34, of Lockport was murdered on Robin Lane.

"This has probably been one of the toughest, if not the toughest, neighborhood in Joliet, going to back when I was a policeman," O'Dekirk said.

"So, having these come down is going to be a positive for the city, a positive for the people that have to live here, a positive for the police department, the fire department, that has to come in here," the mayor said. "Walking through it tonight, we haven't met one person that is worried about where they are going to go or where they're going to get a voucher. Everyone is happy to be leaving. So it's a nice step forward. I really commend the Housing Authority for being proactive and doing this."

Besides the mayor, Friday's door to door tour included City Councilwoman Bettye Gavin; Joliet Police Officer Joe Clement; Michael Simelton, chief executive officer at the housing authority; Mark Jakielski, chief operating officer at Joliet's Housing Authority, Bob Hernandez, one of the Housing Authority commissioners and Garland Mays, from Fairview's Neighborhood Organization.

"There's 168 units that's located on this development. It's highly dense. And it's been plagued with problems for years," Simelton explained. "So our efforts is to create new opportunities for the residents that reside here.

"And that opportunity is going to come in the form of them relocating from the property ... I'm thinking within 90 days or so, we're going to get HUD approval and our goal is to begin to start to move residents to what we call opportunity areas, where there is transportation, a lot of opportunities for jobs, and try to improve their quality of life ... You're probably talking by the end of the summer we should have all of these folks moved out of here."

Patch asked Simelton to explain what happens to Fairview.

"Demolished," he said. "That's the plan. And I estimated (that) at being around $800,000 to $1 million to take this down, 168 units, and we're probably at around 98, 99 percent occupancy out here. So there is a need for affordable housing so we're going to continue to fulfill our mission of building affordable housing."

Images via John Ferak/Joliet Patch Editor