The Birmingham Land Bank Authority gave final approval Thursday for a nonprofit development organization to acquire property needed to move forward with a new-housing initiative that has been years in the making and is aimed at revitalizing North Titusville.

After a presentation by Ronald Bayles, executive director of the Titusville Development Corp., the land bank’s board of directors authorized the transfer of three properties, including one that’s key to construction of the Courtyard Cottages, part of TDC’s Greek Streets Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative.

Bayles initially presented plans for the Greek Streets development project to the board in 2018 as a way to revitalize the west Birmingham neighborhood that once was labelled the most blighted in Alabama.

“Our heart has always been to make sure that there was affordable housing there,” Bayles said, noting that acquiring large, contiguous pieces of property in North Titusville can be difficult because many lots originally held shotgun houses and have only 20 feet of road frontage.

“So, part of the sense of purchasing them and holding them was, at some point, to get the properties next to them,” Bayles continued. “That required waiting some time.”

TDC has been acquiring property in North Titusville through the land bank and from individuals for years. A Theta Avenue lot the land bank agreed to transfer Thursday gives TDC the contiguous property it needs to break ground in the fourth quarter of this year on 15 to 20 houses that will make up the Courtyard Cottages development.

That lot joins 17 other properties TDC has acquired through the land bank for the Greek Streets Initiative. The project initially was planned to include 50 new single-family residences in a five-block area where streets are named after letters in the Greek alphabet. In addition to housing, the master plan includes two pocket parks and a community garden that have been completed.

Bayles told land bank board members that TDC had a partner willing to invest $7 million when plans for the Greek Streets Initiative were drawn up in 2018, but that pledge was contingent on property acquisition that didn’t happen before the agreement expired. Despite the setback, TDC has continued to invest and develop in North Titusville, leveraging other funding sources and partnerships, he said.

Development within the Greek Streets Initiative footprint might not come together exactly as planned in 2018, but portions of it, such as the Courtyard Cottages, are now on track to be built. Bayles said TDC partner Signature Homes will begin construction soon on four houses that are part of the master plan’s Cottages on Kappa segment.

“That was in the initial sense of what we proposed,” he said. “So it’s a continuation of what we proposed.”

Those three-bedroom, two-bathroom homes will be sold for no more than $168,000, Bayles said. All homes in the Greek Streets Initiative are meant to be affordable for working-class people such as police officers and firefighters, according to documents Bayles presented to the board.

“We know affordability is a moving target,” Bayles said. “But because of who we are, what we exist to do as a mission, what we are now able to do because of partnerships that we have with land bank and other entities, we can be proponents for true affordability.”

On Thursday the board also transferred to TDC two other North Titusville properties that are not part of the Greek Streets Initiative footprint. Bayles told the board TDC has secured funding to build affordable homes on those Fourth Avenue South lots.

Catalyst for Revitalization

The land bank transferred all three pieces of property to TDC through a “catalytic property acquisition and transfer agreement.” Such agreements are intended to be catalytic by initiating a ripple effect of positive change in blighted or underinvested areas.

Bayles said that until recent years, North Titusville had seen little to no investment for three decades. That’s despite the historically Black community being close to Birmingham’s downtown core and neighboring Alabama’s largest employer, the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Since 2018, TDC has built two houses, rehabbed 12 houses and revitalized 40 rental units in North Titusville. Bayles said TDC’s goal has been to invest without displacing residents. The investment has raised property values enough that homes can appraise for the amount spent building or improving them, he said. This, in turn, has attracted other investors and developers. About 70 newly constructed or rehabbed houses have become available in North Titusville in the past three years, Bayles said.

Scotty Colson, a land bank board member, said the catalytic land acquisitions amp him up.

“It’s kind of the inkblot philosophy that if you get an ink blot and keep it going, then it starts spreading out,” he said.

Other ongoing catalytic developments are in the Rising-West Princeton and East Lake areas, Colson said.

The Birmingham Land Bank Authority acquires vacant, abandoned and tax-delinquent properties, clears their titles and then sells or leases them to stimulate redevelopment and reduce blight.