City optimistic about new Brittany Village management

By Chris Fortune

An apartment complex plagued with issues in recent years has new owners and management, which is giving the city hope that it will see improvements.

Brittany Village has been under new ownership for around two months, and city officials met with the new management group, Friedman Communities, a few weeks ago. The new owner is 900 Title Jefferson, LLC.

City Manager Bryan Carter said the city was interested in the group’s intentions with the property, and the new owners wanted to know more about previous issues at the property.

“We had some pending concerns on it from a property maintenance standpoint that we were monitoring to make sure they got addressed,” he said. “And of course, they wanted to get some history on the property and what the city‘s monitoring has been.”

Carter said significant maintenance issues developed under the previous ownership group. As News-Press NOW previously reported, unpaid utility bills by the previous owners threatened hundreds of tenants in 2022. Tenants raised concerns about rats on the property over the summer, and over 100 units were affected by a water main break this winter.

But the new management group came to the discussion with a mid-term plan that is developing, which left city officials feeling encouraged because they saw a group that was committed to making improvements.

“They’re still in the process of developing their long-term capital plan and then ultimately determining what the long-term ownership and management structure will look like,” he said. “But that complex has spent such a long period of time just getting by, just working through short-term issues and not having a good long-term outlook. So it’s encouraging to see new ownership.”

Carter said Friedman Communities still has to identify what improvements they must make and get approval from ownership before taking on the tasks.

“Our, I guess, biggest short-term point of discussion was some of the water issues that they’ve had out there through that deep cold snap in December,” he said. “They had several pipe bursts in the complex, and we got an update on where those pipe bursts stood, on how the repairs were coming and then how all the ancillary damage was being handled.”

During the meeting, Freidman Communities discussed its intention to restore properties that are not habitable to make more room for tenants.

“They really had to get in and evaluate the condition of the property, evaluate the occupancy of the property, and work on getting those short-term fixes in place,” Carter said.