- April 18, 2024
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St. Armands Circle leaders are having trouble finding anyone willing to take responsibility for maintaining the area between the storefronts and curbs in the commercial district.
“It’s no man’s land,” said Gavin Meshad, chairman of the St. Armands Business Improvement District.
The sidewalks and landscaping in front of Circle businesses have become a point of concern. At Tuesday’s BID meeting, merchant Eric Seace presented a slideshow illustrating problem areas around St. Armands: broken bricks in planter boxes, landscaping that needs to be edged and mulched, exposed tripping hazards.
“This is St. Armands Circle heading into season,” Seace said.
Seace, working with the St. Armands Circle Association, helped put together a newsletter documenting this issue, which was distributed to area businesses. The goal, Seace said, was to pressure landowners into cleaning up their properties. It’s something the group has tried in the past with little success.
“It kind of falls on deaf ears,” Seace said. “A lot of them don’t believe it’s their responsibility.”
To some extent, Circle and city officials said, they may have a point. The city is responsible for maintaining sidewalk areas up to a certain standard. That usually means maintaining regular poured concrete, Assistant City Attorney Joe Mladinich said.
If a private property owner makes an improvement to the public right of way — for example, replacing the concrete sidewalk with brick pavers — the property owner becomes responsible for that area. The city works to codify those maintenance agreements so they remain in place even if a property changes hands.
On St. Armands Circle, however, the picture is murkier. Many of the right of way improvements predate the city’s efforts to institute maintenance agreements. Former Circle landowner Marty Rappaport said he doesn’t recall ever signing anything when he improved his properties. On Tuesday, he told Mladinich he didn’t think many other property owners had, either.
“If you have any (agreements), I’d be surprised,” Rappaport said.
“I think you’re right,” Mladinich said. “I think, in most cases, you don’t.”
In addition to an aesthetics issue, the lack of clarity creates legal problems. If someone were to trip and fall because of a lack of maintenance, the injured party would have grounds to sue the person responsible for the property.
In cases where it’s not clear who’s responsible, Mladinich said an individual could sue both the city and a property owner.
Diana Corrigan, executive director of the St. Armands Circle Association, asked how to actually clarify the responsibilities in the sidewalk areas.
“What do we do now?” Corrigan said. “People are falling.”
Mladinich said he’s talking to other city staff members about a more proactive approach to sorting out the issue. The city could go to property owners and attempt to codify a maintenance agreement for anything that goes above the city’s established level of service. If an owner doesn’t want to maintain something in front of his or her storefront, the city would remove the improvements and agree to maintain the right of way going forward.
“I think this is probably a good opportunity to address globally, around the Circle, who’s responsible for what,” Mladinich said.
In the meantime, the BID is working on a short-term solution for improving the appearance of the Circle. The group approved spending up to $10,000 for immediate maintenance of the sidewalk and curb areas, hoping to clean up the district heading into season.
There remains some uncertainty about how much, exactly, the BID is empowered to do in the sidewalk area. Ahead of any potential work, Meshad asked the city for more information about the BID’s ability to clean up improved right of way segments.
“I just want to confirm, if we go in there and start changing things around, that a property owner can’t come out there and say, ‘I didn’t authorize you to do that; that’s mine,’” Meshad said. “‘Even though it looks like crap, I like my crap, and I don’t want you touching it.’”
