Police were investigating another incident of gunfire Wednesday night in the Midtown Center shopping center. There were no reported injuries or arrests.
Witnesses and 911 callers near 23rd and Union reported multiple shots fired just before 10:45 PM. Police searched the area but found no victims. According to East Precinct radio reports, a shell casing was found near the center’s 99 Cents store and bullet damage was reported in at least one nearby building.
Witnesses told police a vehicle believed to have been involved in the shooting was seen speeding away from the scene.
The latest gun violence incident at the shopping center comes a week before a major milestone on the path to redevelopment of Midtown. Next Wednesday night, January 4th, a block-long, seven-story development planned with a large grocery store, pharmacy, and more than 400 apartment units will face its first design review. Lennar Multifamily Communities, Regency Centers and Africatown Community Land Trust are working together on a development plan for the project.
Wednesday’s gunfire follows a shootout reported in the shopping center on a busy Saturday night in the area earlier this month. In October, two separate shooting incidents sent men to the hospital with serious but non-life threatening injuries.
The property long-held by the Bangasser family is under contract to be sold to the developers in a deal expected to be worth more than $23 million. A Bangasser family representative told CHS earlier their partnership was acting to improve public safety around Midtown Center and had worked to install “enhanced lighting along 23rd Avenue” and bring in new tenants to fill empty commercial spaces.
Sounds like the new development can’t come soon enough to this corner.
The corner was cleaned up after years of work by residents and the city. Boom, add pot shop and some gang activity nearby and you once again have a bad spot. Sadly, its just a drug corner again after all the work the community put in. No amount of white tech gentrification and displacement of long standing residents is going to fix the current gunfire problem.
That’s a pretty funny comment, Paul. April Fools’ Day is a few months away though.
what gibberish. The gunfire and gang activity was there long before the pot shops, and it hasn’t gotten any worse. In fact, it’s probably become less frequent. And there’s still gunfire like this off Cherry St. Jackson St, and points south, and there are no pot shops there.
Tear that f’ing place down.
Redevelopment will do nothing to solve the real problem, which is gang activity.
Nope, it won’t solve the problem. But it’ll move it to somewhere else.
I can hear them chanting. We will fight Uncle Ike’s.