Uh oh. Looks like Phipps's balsa renaissance housing perimeter is about to advance.

On Oak, I believe. Somewhere CCE is greasing its wrecking balls.

Hurry: Four of Jeff Gahan's delightful gingerbread houses in Midtown remain up for grabs.

2 for 6 in 7 months.

Midtown Renaissance: It depends on what you mean by "painted lady."

The Green Mouse was told that the city would like to see more houses like these built on the Vinod Gupta properties it is acquiring on Market (Lancaster's) and nearby King Street.

But will the feds pay for this round of balsa and prayers?

Wouldn't you love to know the scope of the plan before the congratulatory press release, typically issued AFTER the project is complete?

London's pea soup fog now envelops the Midtown NSP.

An NSP victim.

A reader asks:

What's the current status of the SEJ grant money that was supposed to be paid back from renovated home sales, accrue interest and be used to continue the renovation of the "Midtown" neighborhood?

Is New Directions Housing Corp still handling / holding the money?

How many of those renovated (many to the tune of OVER $200,000 EACH in renovation costs) homes have been sold, and where are the promised future benefits from the project? I seem to remember the promise of a never ending stream of revenue.

Do you mean the houses dubbed Painted Ladies? It might lead to an Elton John song.

Coincidentally, the Courier-Journal's Lexy Gross recently asked me a variant of this same question. Apparently she's doing a story about the Midtown NSP, which I'll link when it appears.

I gave her my best answer, then decided to "check" my work by asking the same question of Jeff Gillenwater. As usual, he's far more succinct than me.

However, first go to the Midtown NSP website to see the various "official" claims being made as to the impact of the expenditures, which as recently as 2013 were viewed as sufficiently suspect that none other than Dan Coffey was asking for an audit.

In retrospect, this must have been when the demolition kickbacks began.

Anyway, the NSP's impact purportedly includes 29 rehabbed homes, the Cardinal Ritter House renovation and the 1321 Inspiration Community Garden.

That's a good question. I think that it being a good question is part of the answer. To my knowledge, people are saying very little because so little has been shared about the project.

Beyond the garden (which I didn't know was an NSP thing), there's been little to no community engagement. How can we have spent nearly $7 million in one neighborhood with neighbors so unaware of what's happening and having no idea where it's heading?

David Duggins scoffed at NSP early on, saying that he could transform New Albany with that much money. When I reminded him they'd already spent more than that on other things, he shut up.

Beyond that, it's another story of spending millions of public dollars on individual properties while not addressing the fundamental infrastructure issues that surround them. Then there are issues like the tavern. The top secret site plan is the only time I recall hearing anything about NSP in the past four years.

The over-arching point is that we've just concluded an election cycle in which the incumbent was able to flash photos of a few new houses in Midtown as evidence of unprecedented success. Local media gave it a pass. My campaign tried to reference the project, bu of course our reach was limited.

Where's the beef?

Can a member of the public access unbiased information to so much as start making sense of the claims?

We were saying it more than two years ago: Transparency? That's a fine idea. Found any yet?

Midtown Renaissance: It depends on what you mean by "painted lady."

I suspect the use of "painted ladies" is intended to imbue these rare instances of New Albanian urban infill with architectural respectability.

"Painted ladies" is a term in American architecture used for Victorian and Edwardian houses and buildings painted in three or more colors that embellish or enhance their architectural details. The term was first used for San Francisco Victorian houses by writers Elizabeth Pomada and Michael Larsen in their 1978 book Painted Ladies - San Francisco's Resplendent Victorians.

But while it's probably no longer politically correct, I prefer Elton John's word association.

"Painted lady" is a euphemism for a prostitute, but Elton's voice is in fine form in this 1976 recording.

BREAKING: "England said Malysz also was instrumental in ... helping turn downtown into a dining haven."

Now we know why Carl went to Columbus: It's a city that doesn't have ENOUGH rental properties, a situation presumably requiring the mindset of a New Albanian to remedy, seeing as we have too much of it.

But heck, he was finished here, wasn't he?

What was there left to accomplish in New Albany after solving the affordable housing problem, orchestrating Midtown's renaissance and helping establish two dozen eateries?

Has that Superman movie yet been released?

There may have to be revisions.

Mercy.

The disinformation being excreted by the ex-mayor to a guileless Associated Press is simply breathtaking in its factual nonchalance, and the best indication yet that in 2015, there'll be another attempted comeback.

Housing woes, rental property shortage addressed in Columbus, Indiana (Associated Press, via C-J)

COLUMBUS, IND. (AP) — The new director of community development in Columbus is meeting the challenge of solving the city's housing shortage head-on as the city eyes public-private partnerships to help address its issues.

Carl Malysz, a former deputy mayor in New Albany, started his job April 22. He told The Republic that he is already working to figure out a strategy to improve conditions.

Columbus Mayor Kristen Brown said a shortage of rental property is driving up rents and making it difficult for families of all income levels to find places to live.

"We have hit a bit of a crisis in the rental market here," Brown said. "Even all the way at the high end, people coming in to work for Cummins or other employers literally can't find places to live."

Malysz, who led similar efforts in New Albany, said he wants to develop a strategy to improve conditions so everyone has access to "good, affordable housing."

That includes improving some distressed neighborhoods and creating more market-rate properties.

"We aspire to make things better. If you do nothing, if you are not progressive, if you do not look forward, you will eventually find yourself at ground zero," he said.

In New Albany, Malysz orchestrated a $6.6 million grant that helped revitalize a dilapidated, midtown neighborhood, former Mayor Doug England said. The program called for rebuilding homes and selling them to younger, lower-middle-income people to help stabilize the neighborhood.

England said Malysz also was instrumental in attracting Hitachi Data Systems to New Albany and helping turn downtown into a dining haven.

Redevelopment to hold a special River View meeting for the review of secret protocols.

Scroll past Chris Morris's coverage of the Midtown Neighborhood Stabilization program's incremental progress, as presented to the Redevelopment Commission, and focus instead on the following passage. Amid escalating hints of desperation, Mainland Properties must come up with some real money, and quite soon.

A special meeting? I'd like to have the peanuts 'n' beer concession on that one.

Idle speculation: Given that the city of New Albany has for the most part unquestioningly endorsed various plans to keep all its eggs in the River View basket, what happens if the project expires? So many times we've heard how important it is to give Mainland every last opportunity to put out to sea, given its organizational expenses (considerable, we're always told) to date. Fair enough, but what we haven't heard is how much it will cost the city in time and potential if the past four years prove to have been wasted.

If the city has a Plan B, it has not revealed it ... and we're not advising you to hold your breaths.

In other business

• Steve Goodman, with New Albany Horizons LLC, along with his partners, asked for a status report of Mainland Properties River View project. The multiuse development along Main Street would feature retail, office and residential space supported by a $12 million parking garage that would be paid for with New Albany tax-increment financing dollars.

Jack Bobo, who heads up River View, placed a $1,000 option on the property in June 2010 and that option was extended a year. Goodman asked if another extension was given. He said his group was concerned since they own adjoining property which they would possibly like to develop in the future.

“We want to know what is going to happen next door to us,” Goodman said.

Redevelopment Commission President Irving Joshua said a special meeting will be called to review the contract and documents with River View.

“I would never agree for a $1,000 option on a million dollar piece of property for a third year,” said Redevelopment Commission and City Council member Kevin Zurschmiede.

8th and Culbertson: Salient back stories?

The drawing above shows the boundaries of the Midtown Renaissance area in black, with red circles showing the initial rehab concentration areas. I inserted the green circle and arrow, the latter pointing to the northwest corner of 8th and Culbertson, where the partially collapsed former tavern building has engendered much discussion of late.

The green circle illustrates the curious fact that the area adjacent to the deteriorating structure, a small salient of houses enclosed by Fairview Cemetery, is omitted from the rehab target area. I don't know why, and am hoping someone involved in MR can explain it to me.

Given that more than one structure at the corner in question is/was owned by the same notorious deadbeat slumlord (some still actually stand), and as a result, the vicinity suffered much degradation, it seems ideal for inclusion.

Why does this matter? We're belatedly being asked by proponents of saving the tavern building to consider the northwest corner of 8th and Culbertson as a potentially critical nexus for Midtown Renaissance, even though it lies somewhat on the furthest perimeter of rehabs as delineated during the first round, and was not even included within boundaries when the project was commissioned.

Why? Commercial vs. residential?

This omission may or may not suggest anything at all, other than typifying a pathetic phenomenon too obvious to be denied: The chronic, longstanding neglect of the building by all parties involved until precisely one minute after the collapse at the structure's rear. Now, emergency measures -- and emergency monies -- are required. One wonders when, and if, we ever learn.

The presence nearby of the cemetery, which anywhere except New Albany would be a park-like showcase for revitalized housing, and the old Robinson-Nugent campus provide persuasion for the notion that the damaged building at 8th and Culbertson might indeed (and ideally) become a neighborhood pivot of the sort being minted of late.

But the question: Why did we wait until the alarms are ringing at crunch time to elucidate the vision? Has something else changed that we should know? Has a new vision come into focus since the bricks started falling?

Is it pragmatism or politics, or just another example of the New Albany Syndrome in full flowering?

One of these signs does not belong. Can you tell which one?

Sewage Flash: Our great-grandparents took occasional shortcuts.

One of America's most enduring, best kept secrets finally has been revealed.

Not since Oliver Stone, Kevin Costner and Donald Sutherland revealed the true extent of the conspiracy to assassinate JFK has such a revelation shaken us to our very core.

Get ready. Here is it. Cover your eyes. Women and chidren first, please.

Outdated infrastructure issue for SEJ project; Sewer board to meet with New Directions over duel connections, by Daniel Suddeath.

The New Albany Sewer Board will meet with officials managing the S. Ellen Jones neighborhood rehabilitation project to determine how to deal with a problem that likely originated from a common construction pattern of the 1920s ...

... Workers for JonPaul Inc. have uncovered what is known as a Y connection — two houses tapped-on to the same sewer line — on two homes so far.

Duel connections were prevalent in houses constructed in the 1920s and 1930s, sewer board vice president Gary Brinkworth said. But the Indiana Department of Environmental Management has banned joint connections, as Brinkworth said they create problems when it comes to maintenance.

That's right. It has been revealed at long last that elements of New Albany's sewer system are antiquated, but for once, can't we look at a sewer pipe half full?

After all, at least the dual connections were not found to be made from tar paper. Surely that's progress.

Okay, okay. We know that a half-century or more of scantily regulated development has left us with inadequacies. The question, as always, is: "What's to be done about it?"

That one should keep us busy until the next profound revelation. If Mrs. Baird's blog comments are any indication, pre-emptive troglodyte hand-warming self-immolations soon will be occurring in the neighborhood that Steve Price continues to forget.

I'll bring free beer and a camera, because that's entertainment.

Steve Price nowhere in sight as work begins to improve the neighborhoood he willfully neglects.

But Price was seen later in the day, hard at work leasing furniture to his grateful rental property tenants. Meanwhile, the sort of genuine accomplishment that has eluded Price's "negatory" legislative tenure was being celebrated at Ritter Park.

HOME IMPROVEMENT: Rehabilitation work begins in New Albany's Midtown neighborhood, by the Tribune's Daniel Suddeath.

Mayor Doug England said the Midtown neighborhood and especially the SEJ area have been hit hard by foreclosures propelled by the recession.

Revitalizing the neighborhood and getting more homeowners there is critical to the success of New Albany, he said.

“This is the closest neighborhood to our downtown — the heart of our city,” England said.

He added that no matter how people felt about federal stimulus spending, the SEJ grant is a “fine example” of how the money can be used to boost New Albany’s economy by improving housing and creating jobs.