Harrisburg City Council meeting on Tuesday.
Harrisburg may make a financial investment towards improving conditions at a dilapidated and neglected affordable housing development in the city.
City Council on Tuesday weighed the potential of Harrisburg contributing $250,000 to help get the Residences at Governor’s Square apartments back to livable and city code-conforming conditions.
Governor’s Square owner Uptown Partners LLC filed for bankruptcy in May 2023, following years of residents’ complaints about their quality of life, as well as hundreds of city code violations and condemnations. The bankruptcy case has been hung up in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania since then, as parties have struggled to find a buyer that had sufficient funds and that could get necessary approvals from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
In October 2024, Uptown Partners, the city and other parties to the case agreed to have the Dauphin County Court of Common Pleas appoint a receiver to manage the property. Attorneys for Uptown Partners have previously stated that the company doesn’t have the money or the desire to maintain and retain possession of the property.
The city has since petitioned the court to appoint Harrisburg-based Midtown Property Management as receiver. Although, a county court judge will have the final say.
However, seed money is needed to allow the receiver to begin the process of creating a restoration plan and beginning work, which is where Harrisburg comes in. If approved by council, the city would provide the receiver $250,000, which, as currently stated in the proposal, would eventually need to be paid back to the city.
“It’s a fairly big lift that we are undertaking, but there’s no one else taking it,” said City Solicitor Neil Grover.
Grover noted that there will likely be more proposed allocations of city funding for the receivership in the future.
Over 20 of Governor’s Square apartments are condemned, and the city has issued hundreds of code violations on the properties. About half of the over 200 units are vacant.
The seed money would come from city funds that were originally awarded to Harrisburg through the federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) for COVID relief. More specifically, the money would be drawn from the $8 million that council designated for affordable housing support.
According to Grover, if the money is approved by council at its next legislative session, a court order on the Governor’s Square receivership could potentially come down next week.
Also on Tuesday, council discussed taking a step towards kick-starting the years-delayed first meeting of a board that was created in 2020, shortly after the death of George Floyd and subsequent nationwide Black Lives Matter protests.
In November 2020, council approved creating a Citizen’s Law Enforcement Advisory Committee (CLEAC) to review actions of the Harrisburg Police Bureau. The approval came after months of community meetings and council discussions and revisions to the bill. Under the bill, council would appoint five board members, the mayor two, and then the board itself would select two which council would approve.
However, the board has yet to meet.
In March 2023, council appointed Brent Miller, Quinton Davis, Adrian Selkowitz, Gia Johnson and Lakichia Carrier to the board. However, the board cannot function without all seven appointees, according to Grover.
Before making its appointments, council members had stated that they wanted to wait to introduce all appointees, including the mayor’s, at once, but that Mayor Wanda Williams had not made her appointments.
On Tuesday, council proposed an amendment to the CLEAC bill that would give them the sole power to appoint the seven initial board members, taking away Williams’ power to appoint.
“It’s been going on since 2020. I just feel as though we are doing the right thing by at least trying to move this forward. It’s not that we don’t want to work with the administration,” council member Ralph Rodriguez said. “We just feel as though we had great people appointed, the board was nearly finished, and to wait numerous years just for one or two appointments is just a bit ludicrous.”
If you like what we do, please support our work. Become a Friend of TheBurg!
