MABLETON, Ga. — The city of Mableton is looking to redevelop neglected properties.
Channel 2 Cobb County Bureau Chief Michele Newell reports Mableton just received $250,000 to tackle the issue.
The Department of Housing and Urban Redevelopment awarded the city grant money to help eliminate blighted properties.
You can see the problem at an abandoned KFC along Veterans Memorial Highway. It’s hard to believe this was the drive through.
“This is one of the areas along Veterans Memorial where we need reinvestment,” Mayor Michael Owens said.
Abandoned overgrown properties are seen up and down Veterans Memorial Highway and other areas in the city of Mableton.
“This here is a quality-of-life issue,” Owens said.
The boarded-up KFC has sat vacant for quite some time. Other troubled properties are easy to find.
“We have a grant for $250k that’s specifically to invest in blighted abandoned dilapidated buildings,” Owens said.
He said the money will help eliminate those properties and redevelopment the area.
“We’re evaluating which buildings that we’re going to either buy in part or whole,” Owens said.
The property on Veterans Memorial Highway isn’t a part of the cities project, but Owens says a local investor is in the process of renovating it.
“The building we are at today has suffered for quite some time,” Owens said. “You see disrepair and lack of investment, a local investor who is a business owner in our community had bought this building and is now putting hard dollars into revitalizing this.”
After the city identifies which properties it will invest in, work to redevelop them will begin.
The city has not released any information about what that timeline looks like.
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