Bill Clay went before the Greenwood City Council to ask for help in fending off Parkway Place, a development he says is unwanted.
Parkway Place, a proposed 65 single-family home development, is being advanced by Greenwood developer Tom Person. While the project has advanced, the council is requesting that Person come to its Feb. 20 meeting to discuss the project.
Clay is a member of Concerned Home Owners, a group opposed to the development.
"We're asking the City Council to consider voiding this project based on the following: No. 1, we don't want it; No. 2, it might have been the legal way to do it but it wasn't the right and the moral way to do it," Clay told the council. "We were not properly notified. We did not have a voice in this."
He said the proposed development will be on longtime farmland and pesticides and other chemicals in the soil might prove hazardous to residents once water and sewer lines are put down.
In general, Clay said, the main opposition to the proposal stems from the low-income renters that will be placed in the homes.
He said projects such as Brazil Homes, Snowden-Jones and Earnestine McNease Apartments are prime examples of housing projects that started out fine and then attracted the wrong kind of low-income, crime-prone tenants.
Clay said his home sits across from McNease Apartments and he heard gunfire on New Year's Eve.
"I thought I was in Iraq. AK-47s going off - just like there was a gun battle," he said.
"They bring down your property values, they increase your crime and they increase your insurance. We don't want it," Clay said.
Although Greenwood has experienced a building boom, with the addition of the Wal-Mart Supercenter and other project, Ward 4 has not seen similar improvements.
"In Ward 4, we get a chicken joint, a liquor store and proposed projects. We're tired of it," Clay said.
Clay again blamed Ward 4's Charles McCoy, saying he had not adequately represented the ward's residents.
"We expected our city councilperson to notify us about an issue of this nature the same way they wanted our vote - knock on the door, send letters, put signs up on the side of the street," he said.
McCoy, who defeated Clay in the election for the Ward 4 city council seat, said he will hold a town hall meeting at the Youth Center later this month to listen to residents' concerns about Parkway Place.
Council President David Jordan said Person and housing specialist Tommy Gregory will be at the Feb. 20 council meeting.
Clay said the residents want answers about the process that allowed the development to reach this point.
"We're going to take it from this room to the Supreme Court," he said.
