Eyesore Pueblo homes closer to demolition

Three Pueblo homes, boarded up and condemned for years, are set to be demolished.

The eyesores, located at 1115 Spruce St., 711 Greenwood St. and 2145 Hellbeck Drive will come down in the coming months.

The demolition can’t come soon enough for neighbors.

“Just something besides that house,” said neighbor Virginia Edwards.

Edwards has lived next to the house on Hellbeck Drive for 30 years.

“Them weeds are something else,” Edwards said.

She’s watched it deteriorate.

“You never know what’s going to happen or … who’s living there,” said Edwards.

But it isn’t the only Pueblo home set for demolition. The one on Greenwood Street will come down and so will the charred house on Spruce.

“That house has been abandoned for the five years I’ve lived here,” said Jordanna Perry, speaking of the Spruce Street hom.

Perry can see this home from her front porch.

“It does get the beer bottles outside, the cigarette butts, and constant graffiti,” said Perry.

Neighbors say that it’s not just that the homes are unsightly, with weeds and overgrown shrubs. They’;re also worried about what kind of illegal activity is going on inside.

“It’s becoming a place for wayward youth to be able to perform things… Pueblo has made the headlines about gangs– it’s like, well then let’s stop providing areas for that type of behavior to go on,” said Perry.

The homes have been on the city’s radar for years. But funding their demolition wasn’t possible until now.

City Council budgets about $100,000 each year for homes like this, and is spending 40-thousand alone on environmental concerns on the lots.

“The amount of money that we’re going to be spending on these three houses probably exceeds the amount,” said City Council President Steve Nawrocki

But City Council recognizes these aren’t the only homes in need of attention.

“There are a number of houses, and there will be a priority list that will continue to be looked at,” said Nawrocki.

Bottom line for Perry, anything on the lot is better than the charred house currently there.

“Make it a community garden, make it a dirt lot, hey – set up a playground there for the children or something would be better than what we have now,” Perry said.

A definite timetable for the demolitions has not been set.