For a few months last fall and summer the lot was posted For Sale By Owner, with a phone number. When I saw that a car had knocked down his fence I called the number to inform him. "Thanks for letting me know", he said, and hung up. Nothing ever happened.
When I moved here 15 years ago it looked much the same as now. A friend who's a real estate agent looked into it for me. Seems the owner doesn't want to sell the land, he just wants to *lease* it to someone! Go figure. Even vacant the taxes must be considerable.

Like Brian said this lot has a private owner and he wants a RIDICULOUS amount of money to lease it. However there has been a little movement recently in terms of possibly developing this site as mixed use so hopefully this owner will see the light and let this lot FINALLY be turned back into something useful!

What has happened with the response on SeeClickFix lately? It used to be when I posted an item, I would get a response back, even if it was not immediate, I would get something. Now this particular item has been posted for 31 days and I have not heard one word about this. I believe it is because we do not have a neighborhood specialist anymore to stay on top of these things. I would be happy to do the job but it seems that hiring people who actually live in the communities they serve is not something the city seems to be interested in...

I will close this issue because this lot is under contract for development and the parties have been in touch with the Whalley Avenue Special Service District. Once they have drawings and more concrete plans they will present before the local management team.