Village people: Homeowners and landlords improve historic neighborhood

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By Alma Gaul | Quad-City Times | Monday, November 13, 2000 5:22 PM CST | () comments

When Wayne Hean first walked through the house of his dreams, he didn't need a real estate agent to show him inside � he simply pushed open a side door and walked in.

With its peeling paint, sagging porch and boarded windows, the house at 1910 E. 12th St. in the historic Village of East Davenport looked ripe for demolition. It had been vacant for about 18 years and rain leaked through the roof as he stood in the kitchen.

He thought it was a "cool house," though, and he and his wife Karen bought it this summer for $20,000 with plans to make it livable by spring for $50,000-$60,000.

Their purchase puts them on an impressive list of people who have invested in the Village over the last 15 or so years, people who have fixed up properties one by one and thereby improved the neighborhood.

"My sense is that in the last 10 years, the Village has become a more desirable place to live," says Bill Wehner, a landscape architect who moved there in 1984 and now owns 10 properties. "Crime is down, properties are being fixed up and business is up."

While many people think of the Village as only the business district with its quaint shops, it is more than that � the businesses are part a larger residential area that was legally incorporated in 1851 as a town upstream and distinct from Davenport.

Nowadays, when people refer to the Village, they generally mean the area that sits in the "bowl" at River Drive and Mound Street, then creeps up the sides of the bowl west to Bridge Avenue and east to Jersey Ridge Road, with 14th Street as the northern boundary.

The bottom of the bowl was the original frontier village and the center of the pre-Civil War lumber industry; the sides and top are where people moved as they became more numerous and more prosperous. This area includes both the Village proper and the Prospect Park neighborhood, both listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Through the years, many of the homes � both large and small � fell into disrepair and many became rentals. In some cases, they became drug hangouts. A stigma developed that if you could afford to live somewhere else, you did.

The turnaround

Now that has changed, says Karen Anderson, an activist and historic preservationist who, with her husband Ferrel, bought their home on East 13th Street in 1973. They now own five properties.

Problems still exist, but "the old stigma is no more," she says. "Now it's a trendy place."

As she looks out her front porch, she points out homes that have gotten new owners and new lives since she arrived � Scott County recorder Ed Winborn and his artist wife Sandy transformed a condemned property into a showplace they've dubbed "Amazing Grace." Lawyer Charlie Brooke and his brother Duncan, who grew up in the Village, returned to rehab three homes. Electrician Dan Burlingame and his wife Lesa returned a brick fourplex into a stately single-family home.

Interestingly, Anderson also can tick off the names of about 15 individuals who have purchased and rehabilitated about 75 homes in the area. In other words, a few people who have been responsible for a lot of the work, a lot of the turn-around.

Many of these homes still are rental units, but with a difference. Fixed-up units command higher rents, which generally draw more responsible tenants.

"What I've found over the years is that in the beginning we'd have to �sell' the East Village," says Brad Dunne, of Eldridge, Iowa, who owns eight rental properties representing 14 units. "Now that neighborhood sells itself. I literally have to turn people away."

While Dunne doesn't live in the Village, many of the multiple-property owners do, and that also makes a difference. Living nearby means they can keep a close eye on things and their stake is personal as well as financial.

It "makes a world of difference," Anderson says.

The Village is not such a small area that everyone knows everyone else, but there is a lot of camaraderie.

Hean, who also is Davenport's 5th Ward alderman, discovered this since he bought his home.

A group of more than a dozen neighbors got together one Saturday to help him clean out the house, for example, and numerous individuals have offered advice.

"There's such a support system here, it's incredible," Hean says. "There are an incredible number of people who want to help."

The stories

To get a sense of what's been happening in the Village, we talked to people who own (or have owned) multiple properties there. Some came with the idea of investing, while others came as single-family homeowners whose multiple purchases just sort of happened. In some cases they were trying to clean up criminal activity � it was either clean up or move out.

These people "didn't intend to be landlords; they were reaching out to secure their position," Anderson says. "They commandeered their neighborhood and turned it around."

Following are five of their stories:

* Bill Wehner and Mary McClain: Problem fell into their yard

Landscape architect Bill Wehner began investing when a problem literally fell into his yard.

He had purchased the 1857 James Coltart cottage on 11th Street in 1984 because he needed a place to live. A few years later he incorporated his design studio and nursery business as Aunt Rhodie's, and began a show garden on the hill behind his property, transforming the slope with paths, water features and all kinds of plants.

That spruced up the neighborhood considerably, but not all was rhododendrons.

Literally five feet from where he and McClain lived was a problem four-plex, a drug hang-out.

"One night the second floor back door opened and a guy knocked a woman down the steps and she literally rolled into our garden," Wehner says. "She called the cops from here and we said, �that's it.'"

They bought the building and fixed it up and from there on, one property led to another.

They developed a reputation and would-be sellers came to them. Over the years, they have purchased and fixed up 10 properties.

Their most recent project was a three-plex on 11th Street that local lore says began its life as a frontier tavern, with a stable on the lower level and sleeping rooms above.

"Every time we bought a place we asked ourselves what the hell we were going to do with it," Wehner says.

But each time the investment has paid off. Through their work they have been able to raise rents from around $250 to into the $500 range, bringing a respectable return on their investment and a healthier neighborhood.

Wehner gives a lot of credit and thanks to people in the Davenport building department and the Neighborhood Housing Service. They were especially helpful in the early days when he didn't know much about housing rehab. They offered advice on construction, materials and meeting city codes.

* Bruce and Suzanne Brocka: One house at a time

"Restoring East Davenport One House at a Time" is the subtitle of Brocka's business card, and that pretty well explains what he does.

Although his job is editing academic journals, he also spends a lot time fixing up houses.

That wasn't his intention when he and his wife Suzanne bought their large, 1894 home on the corner of Mississippi and Summit avenues in 1985.

Like Wehner, they simply wanted a place to live. And like Wehner, they got involved with their second property in self-defense.

"On day my wife was backing out of the driveway and a guy on the front porch on the house across the street pointed a gun at our daughter," Brocka says.

The house had become a crack hangout, was "writhing" with cockroaches and its toilets were overflowing.

"It was either stay here and fight or leave," Brocka says. "We decided to stay and fight."

Through a complicated arrangement involving Interfaith, an ecumenical housing group, various city departments and neighbors, the home was purchased and demolished, replaced by green space.

Although that house was too far gone to save, Brocka has since purchased five other houses east of his home � literally the entire south side of the block � and has single-handedly fixed them up.

For his efforts he received a Friend of Preservation Award this spring from the Scott County Historic Preservation Society.

"What a dramatic effect one person has had on that neighborhood," says Anderson, who also is executive director of the society.

To help market his properties, Brocka took the unusual step of petitioning to re-name his street, from East 10th to Summit Lane.

"People would hear �East 10th' and hang up the phone," he says. Summit Lane has a much more pleasing ring.

In addition to Summit, he owns three other properties that he is fixing up, all within a couple of blocks of his home. In a sense, housing rehab is like a hobby; once you finish one project you want to go onto the next.

Brad and Jodi Dunne: Homeowners thank them

The Dunnes of Eldridge, Iowa, bought into the Village as an investment, beginning in 1994 when they purchased a duplex on East 12th Street.

"We thought it was an up-and-coming neighborhood and for the money we were paying, it had potential," he says.

Two years later they bought three other properties � places Anderson calls "the worst of the worst."

Today they own eight properties representing 14 units.

"We've done everything we could to renovate these homes and get good people into them," he says.

"What's really neat is when the homeowners come up to you and thank you for fixing up a place," says Dunne, who works for the United States Department of Agriculture. "That is awesome."

Troy and Beverly Smith: Fixed an eyesore

The Smiths, formerly of Bettendorf and now Davenport, took on a neighborhood eyesore when they bought an early 1900s rowhouse on 12th Street in 1995.

The building of six, three-bedroom apartments had long been respectable, but had taken a drastic turn for the worse. During 10 months in 1994, says Anderson, who kept tabs on the place, it had been the source of nearly 100 calls to 911, including 18 assaults, a stabbing, a shooting and 11 fires.

It was condemned when the Smiths bought it. They spent about three years fixing it up and have since purchased two other four-plexes, one next door and the other across the street.

Both are engineers at Alcoa.

John Hinkle, Randy Bultema: Anchoring Bridge

Hinkle grew up in an elegant house at 10th and Bridge, left to pursue his fortune in the clothing industry, then returned to reclaim the home in 1990 when his father died.

He and a partner began investing in surrounding property, including two decaying, boarded-up eight-unit brick apartment buildings across the street that were built in 1936. They were premier luxury apartments when they were built, but had fallen into disrepair and been vacant for several years. Hinkle restored them to their former glory, renaming them the Bridge Crest Apartments.

Hinkle now is retired and living in Florida. Of nine properties he purchased and rehabbed, he still owns four.

They are managed by Randy Bultema, of Property Consulting Works, who happened on the scene in 1996. Bultema purchased Hinkle's family home earlier this year and manages some 75 rental units in the neighborhood, including several of his own.

He says there are still some "black sheep" landlords, but "that has not stopped any of us from prospering and getting good tenants."

The key, he says, is to keep properties looking as good as owner-occupied homes and to aggressively tackle problems � complaints of loud music, animals in garbage, junk in alleys.