Driving through the Ridgedale community, Gary Ball eyes the houses surrounding his business. He can recite the histories of many of them, especially those falling apart.
“That gray house right there burned over a year and a half ago. And it’s changed hands once it got out of environmental court,” Ball said. “The guy supposedly got a building permit, but it’ll be another year and a half before it gets fixed.”
Ball heads the Ridgedale Neighborhood Association and has fought, along with other residents, to keep the area from sliding back into the blight and crime that property owners saw in the 1990s.
In November 1995, residents from such neighborhoods as Highland Park, Ridgedale, Avondale, East Lake and Glenwood went to the Chattanooga City Council, asking for help with dilapidated buildings, prostitutes and drug dealers in the communities, according to Chattanooga Times Free Press archives.
But 15 years later, Ball’s neighborhood still is one of a handful in the city that rank at the top in both reported crimes and building code violations related to blighted properties.