Taking a bite out of blight: Antioch weighs its options to clean up abandoned properties

The Antioch City Council held a workshop recently to explore options for addressing blighted residential and commercial properties in the city.

The Jan. 9 workshop took place just hours after Mayor Lamar Thorpe held a news conference at the Delta Fair Shopping Center where he spoke about the city’s oversaturation of deserted commercial properties with absentee corporate landlords. He said several squalid properties throughout the city have become magnets for homeless encampments and illicit drug activity.