MACON, Ga. — The blight fight continues in Macon-Bibb. The county demolished its 300th blighted home Friday morning.
The blight fight started in April 2021. They reached 100 homes in December 2021, and 200 homes in July of 2022.
The 300th home was on Antioch Road in south Bibb, one of three planned demolitions for that street.
"We're very excited about the speed that we've been going over the last 18 months to get to our number 300. I really do expect, by the end of the year, to have 400 down," says Mayor Lester Miller.
Miller says the home is another step in reducing crime and public health problems.
"These are the dangerous structures in our community and we're going to keep tearing them down until all of them are gone. At the same time, we're going to try to replace those homes with homes and new houses for people," Miller says
Ranaldo Clayton has lived in the neighborhood for 20 years, and he says the blight is a safety hazard to the community.
"We want our city to look beautiful, so these certain steps they are taking are what's going to make these things come to light," says Clayton.
These steps include new plans for the site. Cliffview Lake sits behind the home, and the county will open the area to a new park.
Clayton says he has concerns, "There's a lot of projects and people coming to the area, and how they upkeep their projects is the problem."
He's afraid there won't be anyone to keep the park safe and maintained.
"Let's not make a new project just for it to become one of the bad projects for us to fix," Clayton says.
He says he would want to make sure that children and other park users would have to follow certain protocols to keep the park from falling victim to more trouble.
"We already have a police shortage. How are we going to have anyone to really secure this area to make sure it doesn't go bad like the rest of the area? If you have one piece of bad fruit in a box with the rest of the fruit, guess what, that bad piece is going to make the rest of the fruit spoil," he adds.
However, he's open to the process.
I'm all for it, as long as its done correctly and I can actually see the results of the work," Clayton says
Plus he says he'd be interested in using the lake to learn how to fish.
Macon-Bibb Parks and Beautification says they plan to begin work on the park in six months. They are open to community feedback on the project.
Miller says they have a list of about 800 blighted structures.
If you know of a building you'd like to report, you can call Macon Code Enforcement.