Describing blight in Mobile’s downtown as a cancer, Mayor Sandy Stimpson announced next week’s City Council agenda will include an ordinance to create new standards and fees for owners of vacant properties.

“The goal is really to incentivize those who own properties to take care of them and put them in productive use, because if they are not in productive use it is detrimental to everything else going on downtown,” Stimpson said at a Friday press conference. “The idea is you can’t sit there and it not cost you anything. It's costing everybody else something. Either you're going to lease it, fix it or sell it. We’re not trying to tell them what they have to do, but it is an incentive for them to figure out what they are going to do.”

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