A request for information posted online states that the city is seeking “site parameters, facility requirements, operational considerations and financial models to successfully build and operate modular construction housing factories.”
Companies will have 60 days to respond.
“We have to gauge from the private sector, from those who run the factories, exactly what it is that they need,” Parker said.
The homes that once populated the Logan Triangle were built in the 1920s on top of a creek bed filled with ash and cinder. In subsequent decades, the mixture behaved like slow-moving quicksand, causing the homes to sink.
The investigation that followed a 1986 gas main explosion revealed just how bad things had gotten. By the following year, the city started condemning the properties and offering volunteer buyouts to residents.
The work was projected to take three years. In the end, it took the better part of two decades, with the last family moving out around 2003.
Since then, the city has tried redeveloping the land to no avail, while the site became popular for short dumping. The condition of the land presents the biggest obstacle: Only about half of the site is suitable for redevelopment.
On Wednesday, longtime residents applauded Parker’s push to put the Triangle to use.
“Some people see a problem and they run away from that problem. But we have a mayor that sees a problem, and she says ‘Let me find a solution to the problem,’” said Cecil Hankins, who has lived in the neighborhood for roughly 40 years.