City sets sights on cleaning up route
By Ty Johnson
Published in News on April 6, 2011 1:46 PM
Goldsboro's Inspections Department has approved the demolishing of a condemned building on Slocumb Street -- partly in preparation for the Wings Over Wayne Air Show.
The dilapidated house, listed as 506 A and B Slocumb, was inspected in February 2010 and has back taxes owed in excess of $2,000.
Chief Building Inspector Ed Cianfarra said the roof was also cited as a hazard.
"We'd like to get it cleared before the air show," he said before the City Council approved the ordinance to demolish the house, which Councilman the Rev. Charles Williams called "unsightly."
Slocumb Street is expected to be highly trafficked during the air show weekend, as besides leading to Seymour Johnson Air Force Base's Slocumb gate, it will also be the main street by which air show shuttles will take attendees onto the military base. The area that will be facilitated by buses outside the Slocumb Gate has more than 11,000 of the additional 13,320 parking spaces the city is providing to supplement the base's 20,000 on-site slots.
In other business at the meeting, the board voted to allow the lease of the former Slocumb Street Laundromat and Food Grill as Dennis Peele Church and Laundromat, though not every exemption suggested by the planning commission was approved. The church will still need to provide landscaping and sidewalks along Slocumb as required by code or pay the fee in lieu of construction.
The council also allowed the re-leasing of an area on Arrington Bridge Road to Rod Lewis who had previously leased the area to plant a garden and for access to a fishing pond. The lease was terminated, unbeknownst to Lewis, for his failure to maintain the area's cleanliness as stated in the conditions of the lease.
It was later found that the area where debris had been sighted was not Lewis' property, leading the council to re-lease the property.