Absentee blues

LYNN – When Miguel Fuentes and his wife, Soveida, moved in May from Chelsea to Parrott Street around the corner from Goldfish Pond, they felt like they had traded inner-city living for country life.”This was like owning five acres compared to what we had,” Fuentes said.But the couple’s enthusiasm dampened since then, thanks to the green-shingled house with the boarded-up windows and rodent problem just yards away from the backyard where Fuentes’ daughter, Iylah, and her cousins play.”Rats run through the backyard and raccoons come out of the garage. It’s dangerous: Who is liable a kid gets hurt?” he asked.Once a home to a longtime Parrott Street family, 29 Parrott is not just a source of worry for Fuentes, but an eyesore for his neighbors who take pride in their street lined with one and two-family homes and a former branch library converted into residences.”It’s discouraging. You don’t feel like doing anything to your own house,” said long-time Parrott Street resident Betty Mehara.Out-of-towners blamedMehara and neighbor Maria Perez said 29 Parrott’s decline is an example of what happens too often in Lynn neighborhoods when out-of-town owners buy local property.City assessing records indicate Christopher Graham of Chelmsford and John Lembidakis of Saugus owned the building in 2007 and lost their property to the city in 2011 after failing to pay property taxes. Perez, a 23-year Parrott Street resident, said 29 Parrott’s condition went from bad to worse after the tax taking.”They never did anything with it. It just kept deteriorating,” she said.Graham and Lembidakis asked city councilors in January to give them another shot at restoring the property with Lembidakis subsequently offering to live in the building while he repaired it. The pair failed to meet financial conditions set by Councilors Darren Cyr, William Trahant Jr. and their colleagues and 29 Parrott became city property and a neighborhood headache.The pair made a last-ditch effort before a state Land Court judge in July to reclaim 29 Parrott. The court turned them down after city officials, including Cyr, expressed interest – according to court paperwork – in having Housing Authority and Neighborhood Development “repair and rehabilitate the property and transfer (it) to an owner-occupant.”Lembidakis still he thinks he deserves another shot at fixing up the building he purchased with Graham for $229,000 in 2007. He said the building was “in total disrepair” when they bought it from a bank. Lembidakis said he and Graham renovated 29 Parrott’s interior in hopes of renting it and taking in income to pay for exterior renovations.”It didn’t work out as we planned,” he said.He said city officials rejected his attempts to pay back taxes and said he was never formally notified about the property’s seizure for non payment of taxes.”I didn’t feel like I had due process,” Lembidakis said.He would like to “make an agreement” with the city to acquire and fix-up 29 Parrott and involve neighbors in his plans “to beautify the property.”Perez appreciates city attention focused on her neighborhood eyesore, but she does not think 29 Parrott can be restored.”The place is a disaster; it needs too much work,” she said.Parrott Street resident Maria Hamelers has the same opinion about the building across the street from her home, 99 Chatham St. The property has become such a nuisance that Hamelers rooted for it to be taken by the city and torn down for a new Marshall Middle School. City land-taking plans for the school do not include the two-family house overlooking the commuter rail tracks.”I was hoping for a nice soccer field,” she said.City inspectors have played “a cat and mouse game” with New York state resident and 99 Chatham St. owner Mark Geohagan since 2007, said city Chief Inspector Roger Ennis.Inspectors maintain 99 Chatham’s basement and upper floors, Ennis said, have been repeatedly converted over the years into bedrooms, making the building an illegal rooming house and unsafe s