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Pine Bluff Urban Renewal Agency demolishing neglected homes, hopes to build up the city

With each blighted or abandoned home torn down, Pine Bluff hopes it’s turning into a more appealing city.

PINE BLUFF, Ark. — With each blighted or abandoned home torn down, Pine Bluff hopes it’s turning into a more appealing city. A 2017 five-eighths cent sales tax is allowing the Pine Bluff Urban Renewal Agency to begin demolishing eyesores.

Toward the end of 2018, the agency began tearing down homes that are doing the city more harm than good. This is all part of the Go Forward Pine Bluff initiative to build a better future for the city.

Already 10 homes have been torn down as part of this effort. 

“My phone starts blowing up saying ‘it’s happening, it’s happening,’" said Ryan Watley with Go Forward Pine Bluff. 

Right now, there are about 40 more homes on the condemnation list. 

“Some of them can be rehabbed and some need to be torn down, so we evaluate that as we go through," Watley said. 

The goal is for the owners to fix them up, but if they won’t or can’t, crews will demolish them.

"It’s a public nuisance, it’s a safety hazard, it attracts a lot of crime," Watley said. 

Homes on the list are burnt, neglected or sitting vacant, some for a decade.

"The roofs are fallen in, they’re burnt out homes,” said Maurice Taggart with the Pine Bluff Renewal Agency. “These are eye sores for the community." 

According to Taggart, each demolition costs $4,000 - $7,000. 

“The most important thing is improving the quality of life here in Pine Bluff. Pine Bluff has always been a destination hub and what were trying to do is bring it back to what it once was," Taggart said. 

Over the next several years, hundreds of homes are expected to be torn down across the city.

"When you ride through the city, you should be able to feel a need of pride and when you see those boarded up homes, that’s saying there's no pride in this community," Watley said. 

The Pine Bluff Urban Renewal Agency was formed in 2017 to remove blight and take property to build up the city.

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