When the Gainesville City Commission bought the vacant Mom’s Kitchen restaurant in 2009, there were a number of reasons to question the purchase.
The city was dealing with a $1 million budget deficit at the time and the project wasn’t on a list of priorities for redevelopment. Yet the commission voted 4-3 to pay $165,000 for the property, nearly double its taxable assessed value.
In defending the purchase, City Manager Russ Blackburn touted city plans to revitalize the neighborhood around the restaurant’s Northwest Fifth Avenue location. He wrote in a column for The Sun that the mayor and commission had “taken a proactive stance in finding long-term solutions to a problem that has festered far too long.
“This area has suffered from years of neglect that have led to tell-tale symptoms of a neighborhood in crisis, including major housing code violations, blight, high crime rates and illegal drug activity,” he wrote.