Downtown improvements
By JOHN PECK
Times Staff Writer
john.peck@htimes.com
Housing units willbe removed toimprove drainage
Some blighted public housing units downtown will soon be removed as part of a plan to improve drainage and, potentially, line the widened Pinhook Creek with walkways and benches. Officials say the move may even make other flood-threatened land downtown more readily developed.
The City Council on Thursday night authorized a $2.3 million purchase of part of the Searcy Homes housing project near the Holmes Avenue/Pollard Street intersection behind the Coca-Cola building. The 3.73-acre tract includes as many as a dozen of the 22 residential housing units in Searcy.
The Pinhook widening, to be paid mostly with federal flood mitigation money, will be an extension of long-range city plans to convert unsightly drainage ditches into more effective, natural waterways lined with greenways and landscaping.
The land could also be natural place for expansion of the Von Braun Center, city officials said last March
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