The Montgomery City Council has accepted the Equal Justice Initiative’s idea to construct a sky bridge connecting two of their buildings across Montgomery Street.
Ten persons spoke in favour of the issue, including Mayor Steven Reed. The project will fix up the outdated former Hilltop Arms Apartments structure. According to Stephen Seabolt, EJI’s learning and engagement specialist, about 98% of the demolition of the building is complete. A separate facility will be built across the street as part of the initiative. The sky bridge will connect the two towers.
“So I think it’s incumbent upon this council to move in that direction and continue making sure that development can happen in Montgomery in a responsible and a time sensitive way so that we don’t further those who are investing here because for those of us who have grown up going to that part of Montgomery all our lives those lots have sat dilapidated for decades so that’s not new, so I’m glad they’re here, and I’m glad that we’ve got a home-based investor,” Reed said.
Three participants requested that the council defer the topic until the next meeting in two weeks so that they could become more familiar with the project.
“I would just like to understand more what the impact is,” said Will O’Connor, who co-owns Hilltop Public House, which would sit across from the new buildings. “I certainly hope it would be positive, and I would expect it to be positive, but you’re talking about foot traffic on the street, but they’re proposing to build a bridge to keep people off of the street, so I’m just trying to understand what the plan is there and how it does relate to our business and to the neighborhood.”
The council postponed the vote until the end of the meeting to allow EJI officials to talk with O’Connor and other property owners in the vicinity.
Several neighbours spoke out in support of the new centre, which would contain a hotel and a restaurant and be designed to accommodate small conferences.
Lana Cavassa, who lives down the road from EJI’s project, pointed out that even a two-week delay may have an impact.
“Also as a general contractor I would say that any kind of delay can definitely affect the project, and I would encourage you to try to come to a resolution today if possible,” Cavassa said.
Sia Sanneh, a senior attorney at EJI, addressed the hurdles that the association faces while developing new programs as an organization that advocates for Black people’s rights.
“After other developers have failed to advance projects in this neighborhood… and I think there have been highly publicized but never realized plans that all of us are aware of,” Sanneh said. “We’ve worked directly with the city departments to achieve approval for every department, and as a Black-led organization, I just must say that we frankly encounter lots of obstacles when we’re developing new projects.”
“And our experience has been that out-of-town developers may exploit our commitment to doing things. We may encounter other types of resistance. Others think only of their economic benefit and how things can create benefit to their businesses, and we think that’s important, but our approach has always been different. It’s always been unique, and we feel like the results speak for themselves.”
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