May 18, 2013
A quiet street in Frenchtown used to be filled with crime and fear, and quaint cottages used to be crack houses. Lifelong residents will tell you the area was nicknamed “the hole.”
“I can remember some of the activities that went on in that hole. It was a lot of drugs being sold, fighting, slum area,” says Kim Spight, who grew up in Frenchtown.
That is until Jimi Ellis purchased the lot and renovated nine homes.
“It just needed everything; painting, holes in the wall,” says Jimi Ellis.
Monday, Keep Tallahassee Leon County Beautiful honored Ellis and other community members with a "We Noticed" award, but the Frenchtown resident and landowner says the true reward has been the turnaround his neighborhood has seen.
“The children are in the streets, and that's a good thing. Used to it wouldn't have been safe. Now the popsicle truck runs up and down the street. He didn't do that,” says Ellis.
This year's "We Noticed" winners received a gift certificate from Home Depot.
