We jump to Union Boulevard on Dr. Martin Luther King Drive (Wohl Community Center is one place we went by) and start to see some more interesting buildings along the former Easton Avenue.

These one story commercial buildings look largely abandoned.

We now arrive in the Wellston Loop, which I have looked at before back in February of 2015; there has been a lot of demolition since then.

The Hamilton Heights neighborhood is on the south side of the street.

While Wells-Goodfellow is on the north side of the street.

Above, the Best Place, which was the banquet hall of former alderman and convicted felon Jeffrey Boyd, has now apparently transformed into a marijuana dispensary. Back in 2015 when I walked these streets, numerous residents approached me and expressed their anger at his business receiving frequent grants from the City while the rest of the neighborhood crumbled.

This view I took down MLK to the west shocked me. While obviously almost all the stores are vacant, I’ve traversed this stretch on multiple occasions. On any given Saturday morning, there are always people out, waiting for buses, going here and there to get to work or other activities. But despite it not being any earlier in the morning on Saturday, it was completely deserted. I know the City has been losing tens of thousands of people according to the U.S. Census Bureau since 2020, so is this a concrete manifestation of those losses?

As I turned right to head north up Hodiamont Avenue, I did see a glimmer of hope. The City is investing in the renovation of notable buildings, and the old streetcar station is being renovated.

The old Wellston Loop Building once stood from where I took this photograph. I was torn some time ago now.