About

When you live for a few years in any location, you inevitably get used to the surroundings.  You forget about all the nooks and crannies of the streets, because the human mind is designed to filter out unnecessary information.

When I talk to people who are visiting Mason City for their first time, one of the recurrent things brought up is how many vacant buildings there are on the main thoroughfares through town.  The city’s population is claimed to be somewhere around 29,000 people, yet a great percentage of buildings on Federal Avenue and 4th St SW are vacant.  Many of them have been vacant for upwards of a decade, or even more.

There are many efforts underway to make the city more appealing visually, but none seem to address the encroaching blight in the heart of the city.  Most development is occurring on the west side of the city, due to factors like shifting traffic patterns.  New developments also bring more tax revenue to the city because of the higher property values for these new structures.

Many of the buildings I’m posting here are great structures that I’d love to see a business in.  I have no experience with city planning, and don’t pretend to, but it seems obvious to me that existing structures should be dealt with before focusing on new development on the edge of the city.

I didn’t start this because central Mason City is comprised solely of empty buildings, but because people here forget just how many there are in comparison to occupied buildings.  I also wanted to photograph some of these buildings for the sake of documentation, to capture the state they were in when I shot the photograph.

If you have any thoughts, comments, or more information, please leave comments on the entries or email me at derek (at) dderek.com.